


Sleeping Dragons Part 1: Lencten

by LadySigyn214



Series: Sleeping Dragons: A Tale of the Founding of Hogwarts [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 10th Century, Anglo-Saxon England, F/M, Founding of Hogwarts, Gen, Historical Accuracy, King Aethelraed, four founders
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 63,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25536238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySigyn214/pseuds/LadySigyn214
Summary: 989 AD. Saxon King Æthelræd is unsteady on his throne, faced with the increasing threat of Danish invasion into England. Villages are ravaged by both armies. In the Danelaw region of England, a young Norse healer named Helga cares for children orphaned by war; and when one begins to show signs of magical abilities, Helga – herself one of the most gifted witches in the Danelaw – realizes that if enough magical children are left with no parents to teach them, then the use of magic might die out in England forever. Helga thus resolves to collect the orphaned witches and wizards of war-torn England and take them somewhere to be educated in safety and secrecy. To accomplish this, she seeks out the aid of Goderic, a Saxon wizard in the king’s household, to bridge the cultural gap. They enlist the Welsh druidess Rhonwen, who uses her scrying glass to locate all of the magical children on the island. And together the three trek north to the Highlands, where they approach the reclusive Basque wizard Salazar with a proposition – to turn the ruined Roman fort on his land into the center of England’s magical education.The story of the Founders, placed in the most accurate historical and cultural context possible. Please review!
Relationships: Helga Hufflepuff/Salazar Slytherin
Series: Sleeping Dragons: A Tale of the Founding of Hogwarts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850338
Comments: 16
Kudos: 29





	1. The Girl Who Spoke to Serpents

_A. 979. In this year was Æthelræd consecrated king at Kingston, on the Sunday, fourteen days after Easter…. That same year was seen a bloody cloud, oftentimes, in the likeness of fire; and it was mostly apparent at midnight, and so in various beams was coloured: when it began to dawn, then it glided away._

_\-- Excerpt from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_

Nothing like the clouds of colored fire had been seen over the village of Little Witchingham for ten years, and that was just fine with the villagers who lived there. Marauding bands of Danes on their east, the casually destructive movements of the Saxon armies to their west, and the ordinary concerns of bringing food from earth to table were quite enough for them, if you please, without the addition of bloody portents and unearthly lightning omens above their heads. But the lack of fire and lights in the sky for ten years did not, of course, mean that Little Witchingham had been entirely untouched by strange or mystical happenings.

The village and its surrounding farmland were divided more or less down the middle by the single road, little more than a wagon track, which ended in the yard of the squat stone chapel at the village’s northern limit. Those villagers who lived and worked along that track and to the west of it often found themselves making excuses to avoid crossing into the fields on the eastern side. They would, of course, say that they simply had no business over there. That the folk who lived in East Little Witchingham liked to be left to themselves, and who were they to tread loosely on other people’s wishes for privacy? Odd fellows, they might say if pressed. Perfectly fine people, of course, but… odd. Wore funny clothes. Used funny words, sometimes, when they thought they weren’t being heard. They were mostly of Danish blood on that side of the village, some might have pointed out, and naturally that would make a difference; but little quirks of culture and language could not account for everything.

They could not, for instance, explain the occasional flashes of light that could be seen through the trees along the edge of the easternmost barley plot, nor could they account for the numerous instances of people becoming inexplicably lost when trying to catch a stray sheep among the eastern fields. And although nobody ever believed him, the smithy’s boy Cerdic would swear to any who would listen that Hunlaf the woodcutter had a dog with two tails.

Whatever the reason for the strange happenings that tended to accompany the folk in the east of Little Witchingham, it was the general consensus of the rest of the village that they were not bad ‘uns, at any rate. They got on with life same as other folk, and helped out their neighbors when they could. Hunlaf the Woodcutter was the particular exception to their rule of avoidance; for whether his dog had one tail, or two, or twenty, he could mend a broken plough or carve a toy for a child with unnatural (and some said _devilish_ ) speed. Hunlaf was a big man in all directions – although surprisingly deft even with his massive hands – with wild locks of copper hair which he tried to placate by keeping them plaited; and he was never seen without his tall, stout ash stave on which were carved clusters of tiny inscrutable runes. Often during ploughing or harvest a handful of the village men could be seen carrying some broken farm implement from their western plots across the road to Hunlaf’s cottage, which was the only one of its fellows that was not hidden among the trees. The tool would be carried into his workshop and the door shut behind him, and his work was so utterly silent that none could ever figure how he did his repairs. But the silence was always broken for them by his daughter Helga, who would make friendly conversation with the farmers in the dooryard of her father’s shed while he worked. And as often as ploughs were dragged there with injuries even a toddler could have fixed, it was the opinion of the village mothers that it was really _she_ who the farmers’ boys were most keen to visit.

Helga Hunlafsdottir was tall and fair – taller, in fact, than many of those keen farm boys by an inch or two. Her eyes were the transparent green of stained glass mounted in dark lead rings, and her golden hair hung nearly to her knees in a braid as thick as her forearm. Dressed as she usually was in her long cloak the color of oxlip blossoms, she looked like a _valkyrja_ out of one of the Danes’ poems, and she could fix a man with a piercing stare to match if she thought he deserved it. The old women of Little Witchingham muttered amongst themselves that it was a shameful waste for a girl like that to be still unwed at nineteen, all her childbearing years slipping away unused, and there was a silent conspiracy among them to get her married off to one of their sons if they could. But although Helga was sweet and genial to all and had time for each of the village men’s flustered conversations, she had never shown real interest in any of them – and worse, her father seemed in no hurry to talk of dowry with any of them either. At first they assumed it was a divide of culture – that her father would naturally prefer to give her to one of his own Danish neighbors than a Saxon; but as he seemed to make no discernable gestures in that direction either, the speculation about why had only deepened.

“May’ap she think to join the church?” suggested a farmer’s wife one day over her churn, to the general nods of her neighbors. “Sweet girl, that. Make a good sister.”

“Or perhaps,” said the town’s priest, who happened to be passing the dooryard, “they might prefer the hammer of Thunor to the cross of Christ?” Everyone thought then of the runes carved on Hunlaf’s ash stave, and the women’s fingers leapt to their foreheads to cross the thought away.

“I allus thought it were because she had babbies already and no man’d take her,” said one old woman.

“I’d still take her,” piped her son from the safety of the other side of a hedge, and he had to dodge the empty bucket she tossed at him. The first woman scoffed.

“Oh, never! Those aren’t hers – those is orphans what she keeps sometime when she finds ‘em what needs her. She just send one up t’ Norwic back at Candlemas, to be in service on the bishop.”

“Aye, that’s too many to be all hers,” the old woman conceded.

“And she do be dreadful good at herbs and helping the sick ‘uns and all.” To this there was more general nodding and agreement, for it was widely known in both Little and Greater Witchingham that Helga Hunlafsdottir could spend five minutes in the forest and ten at her table and have ready in hand a concoction that would cure most things that ailed one.

“Know why, that?” interjected Cerdic the smithy’s boy, and like always, the villagers humored him. “She’s a _witch_ , that be why.” Everyone nodded sagely and suppressed their giggles, and Cerdic puffed up as he always did when disbelieved. “I sawr that dog!” he protested. “That have _two_ tails, it do. That in’t natural.”

“Nor be yer face, boy,” said the old woman, “but we don’t call _ye_ witch for all.” And as was usual at this point, the conversation descended into the other farm boys trying to capture Cerdic to look for a witch’s mark on his very grubby person, and no more was said of Helga - that day at least. The villagers’ laughing voices fluttered up into the gentle spring breeze and were carried across the road, out over the eastern barley fields where they mingled with the trilling of songbirds, the hum of spring insects, the water-like shushing of moving treetops, and – in the far distance – the squeals and laughter of children in the field beyond Hunlaf the Woodcutter’s cottage.

* * *

“Harald! Drop that this _instant_ , that is NOT food!”

In the grass at the edge of Hunlaf’s dooryard, the boy called Harald grinned wickedly and moved the squirming lizard in his fist closer to his mouth. Helga Hunlafsdottir drew herself to her full height in the cottage doorway and narrowed her glass-green eyes. “Harald….”

The boy’s resolve wobbled under her firm gaze, and the lizard took its chance to wriggle free of his chubby fingers. It scurried away into the thick spring grass to celebrate its good fortune with its fellows. Helga swept her oxlip yellow cloak back from her arms and scooped Harald up from the dirt where he had been playing. It cheered her to feel the weight he had gained – when she had found him and his sister Hnossa a month past, he had been thin and weak, having lived on berries in the forest for days after the destruction of his village by a Saxon army. The children had been orphaned, their whole settlement burned, and the older sister had done the best she could to feed the both of them as they wandered aimlessly looking for the next village. All this Helga had learned in pieces from Hnossa; Harald still hadn’t spoken, but that didn’t worry her terribly at the moment. Children often chose silence as a response to the uncontrollable world they lived in. He would, perhaps, speak again in his own time; and if he didn’t, what then? A man didn’t need to speak to make his way in life, and besides – his sister could chatter plenty enough for both of them.

“If you are hungry,” Helga said to him softly, giving the boy a gentle squeeze, “ _please_ try to confine your diet to things that are already killed and waiting for you in the kitchen, hmm? Or perhaps some nice bread? Mm? Can you say _bread_?” She shifted him to her hip and mimed the breaking of bread. Harald stuck out his little pink tongue in response and made a noise at her. “Right,” she surrendered, and carried him into the cottage.

Inside the little house was cool, dark, and dry. The air smelt of new bread and the herbs that hung from the thatch ceiling over a long table which stood under the single window. Helga put Harald down on the rush floor mat and went to the table, pulling toward her a partial loaf of bread wrapped loosely in a white cloth. Her hand rested on the loaf for a moment as she glanced out the window, ensuring that she was not observed, and then at Harald (who was looking not at her but at the corner of the mat he was now trying to chew). She then picked up not the bread knife but instead a long, slender stick of pear wood which had been lying in a cut groove at the back of the table.

“ _Skera_ ,” she whispered, and touched the stick to the loaf of bread. A thin slice lopped itself off the end of the loaf and fell over onto the surface of the table. Helga slipped the pear rod back into its groove and draped the cloth back over the loaf. Turning to Harald, she bent down and held out the bread to him. He took it with both dirty hands. “Better than lizards?” she asked him, expecting no response.

“Awm,” he grunted, shoving the bread into his mouth. Helga sighed. She supposed while she was at it, she might as well feed the other one too – if she could find her.

“Harald, have you seen your sister lately?”

Chew, chew, chew.

“You could …point in a general direction…?”

Chew, chew, chew.

“Alright. Enjoy your bread. Do NOT eat the rug. I’ll be right back.” Helga pushed herself upright again and stepped back out into the dooryard. It was only the two children staying there at the moment – she’d cared for as many as six at a time in the past – but between Harald trying to eat everything that held still (and some things that did not) and his sister Hnossa always running off and getting into mischief, two was _quite_ full capacity, thank you very much. The sister was older, almost nine, and although she at least knew the difference between a meal and wildlife, she had a particular proclivity for getting into trouble while trying to _chase_ said wildlife. Helga thought for a moment and then went back inside to retrieve the stick of pear wood. Once in the dooryard again, she placed the stick on a bare spot of dirt and bent over it. “ _Leita_ ,” she said quietly.

The stick lay quite still for a few seconds, as one might expect a stick to do. Then it did something very unexpected and un-stick-like; it quivered gently, stirring up loose soil beneath it, and then it spun in place three times before coming sharply to a halt, its tapered nose pointing at an angle into the meadow beyond the dooryard. Helga nodded as though this were just what she’d expected to happen. She picked up the stick, slipped it into an inner pocket of her cloak, and started walking into the tall grass in the direction it had pointed.

* * *

There was a grand spreading oak at the end of the far meadow just before the cultivated land of Little Witchingham gave way to wild forest, and it was here that the spinning stick had directed Helga, if vaguely. She was still far distant from the tree, but when she shielded her eyes from the sun she could just make out the shape of the little girl sprawled out in the cool grass beneath it, head bent low to the ground and feet jutting up into the air behind her. Helga sighed in relief. She had half expected to find the girl buried up to her waist in a badger’s sett or stuck up a tree with a wasp nest. Lying on the ground watching insects was infinitely more manageable. Helga picked up her skirt to stop it dragging on the vegetation and trudged on, stirring up disgruntled young grasshoppers and jarring clouds of fragrance out of the abundant wildflowers. She moved as softly as she could; Hnossa had snuck up behind Hunlaf two days ago and nearly caused him to light his beard on fire, and on her way through the field Helga had decided to even the score by grabbing the little girl’s feet and tickling before she realized anyone was behind her.

As she grew closer, Helga began to hear faint whispers of the sort little girls make when they are imparting great girlhood secrets to a bosom companion. Helga smiled; the little one was telling her troubles to butterflies today. Well, let her; butterflies were excellent secret-keepers, and they held no judgments nor offered opinions. The best kind of friend, Helga thought absently. She was approaching the shade of the tree now, and she tucked her skirt hem up into her girdle to free her hands and slipped out of her shoes. She would have to be utterly silent if she wanted to surprise such an observant child. Helga tiptoed up until she could hear snatches of the girl’s whispers.

_“…ssssaaa, ssskæ. Ssssimii hifffu?”_

Helga stopped abruptly, her hands still in the ready-to-tickle position. Her skin went cold in spite of the warm sunshine. The words coming from Hnossa’s mouth were not any that Helga recognized, and her voice itself sounded… odd. Incongruous. There was an echoic quality to it that made it sound as though it came not from the little girl’s throat but from some Other Place. But it was not the unfamiliar language or the tone of Hnossa’s speech that froze Helga in her tracks; rather, it was what she was speaking _to_. Coiled in front of the little girl’s face, its head raised up level with her eyes and swaying gently in the breeze, was a large banded serpent. Helga nearly cried out, until she realized that it was not an adder but a harmless grass snake. Its quick little tongue was flashing in and out of its mouth as though it meant to answer the child’s apparent question. Perhaps it _did_ answer her; for after a few moments of what seemed like silence to Helga, the girl continued in her strange hiss.

_“Sssssia gassssi nafassss hhhhorem—”_

Hnossa stopped in mid-word as the snake flicked its tongue again, this time bobbing its head in a way that was quite unnatural for a snake. As though it had spoken and interrupted her, Hnossa’s little brows drew together. _“Sssjehhh dsssoduuxsss?”_ The snake bobbed its head more deliberately, and Hnossa rolled over to face Helga, startled.

“Fru Helga!” she cried, this time in her normal voice, and Helga let her still-frozen hands drop down to her sides. The snake melted silently back into the grass, apparently deciding that two humans was one too many. Hnossa glanced back at it, seeming disappointed, and Helga cleared her throat uncertainly.

“I… I was feeding your brother, and…thought you might be hungry too.” The little girl shrugged her shoulders in a way that said she would never turn away food, but she would rather still be conversing with the snake. Helga tucked her skirt under her legs and sat down beside Hnossa, who was picking nervously at the petals of nearby flowers. “Did you make a friend?” she asked diplomatically after a few moments of silence.

“He said his name was Æssmoghhu.”

“Did he?” Helga asked genially to mask her astonishment. The little girl nodded, picking petals off a cowslip.

“Didn’t you hear him, Fru Helga?”

“No, I didn’t,” Helga said quietly. She chose her next words cautiously, careful of the girl’s reaction. “Hnossa, when Æssmoghhu spoke to you, did you hear his voice out here, in the air… or inside your mind?” She tapped gently at Hnossa’s forehead.

The little girl thought about that, her brows and nose wrinkling, and Helga noticed that her downy eyebrows were as pale as milk in the spring sunlight. “His mouth didn’t move, did it, Fru Helga?” Hnossa said after some time, pulling the petals from another flower one at a time before looking up at her guardian. Helga shook her head.

“No.” She regarded the little girl thoughtfully, the full import of what she had witnessed now beginning to dawn upon her. She had heard of people being able to speak with serpents, but only in stories, or in second- or third-hand accounts. Her father’s father Thorfridh had once told her about a _seiðmaðr_ from his grandfather’s village who could do it, but that was long ago and far away. It was a rare thing – and it never occurred in isolation from …other abilities. Helga picked a harebell and tucked it gently behind the little girl’s ear. “Hnossa, do you speak to snakes often, or was this the first time?”

Hnossa shrugged again, but then she followed it with an answer. “When I was little like Harald, there was an adder in the firewood pile. It wanted to bite Father, but I told it to go away and it listened.” Helga smiled at her and pressed further.

“And what did you say to your friend today?”

“That was aloud,” said Hnossa. “You didn’t hear me?” Helga took a deep breath before answering her.

“I… heard you speaking to him. But I couldn’t understand the words you said.”

“But…,” began Hnossa, then she stopped. She took a moment to ponder, and then blurted, “But I was saying ordinary words, Fru Helga! He was surprised that I could hear him, and I told him yes, I would speak to him. And I asked him his name – and then I asked him how I could hear him when other people couldn’t. I think he was going to explain, but then he told me there was a person coming, and I said, _What person?_ That was you, and then he went away.” She picked another flower and twirled it between her fingers thoughtfully. “Why couldn’t you understand me?”

“Because,” Helga explained slowly, “you weren’t using a language that I know.”

“But I don’t know any other languages, Fru Helga, just this one!”

“In your mind, it must sound like our language,” Helga nodded. “But out loud, you were speaking the tongue of the serpents.”

“How?” Hnossa cried, a look of consternation settling over her face. “How can I speak what I don’t know?”

“My grandfather called it the Ormrmal – Serpent Speech,” Helga replied. She reached over and pulled the little girl into her lap. “The Saxons call it Snacan-tunge. There are other names for it in other places. It works in your mind – people who have it can hear and understand serpents and can speak back to them in their own language, even though it may sound to them like they are speaking their ordinary tongue. It is very uncommon. You are the first person I have ever met who can do it.” She tapped the little girl on the nose and gave her a reassuring smile, because she still looked worried. Hnossa gazed up at her seriously.

“Is it bad?”

“Of course not,” Helga said immediately. “You kept your father safe from a bite, and you made a friend today. Those aren’t bad things.”

“But you were afraid when you heard me,” Hnossa said matter-of-factly. Helga sighed.

“I was… very surprised. I have never known anyone who could do it, and it sounds… a little unnerving to people who can’t understand the words. It is a tongue full of whispers.”

This seemed to placate the girl, and the two of them sat in silence for several warm, comfortable minutes. The bright green leaves above them made hushing and puffing sounds in the breeze, and they both watched a fat, dozy bumblebee make its way through several flowers in front of them before floating off to somewhere less inhabited. After what she felt was long enough, Helga brushed her fingers through Hnossa’s milk-pale hair and asked what she really wanted to know.

“Hnossa,” she began, “are there any other things you can do that other people can’t? Maybe things you never showed anybody because you were worried about what people would say?”

The little girl didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached down and plucked a harebell stem on which only the topmost flower was open. The milky blue petals matched her eyes almost exactly, and each unopened bud below it was a deep starry purple. Hnossa stared at the flowers almost dreamily until Helga thought she simply wasn’t going to answer at all. Then, as Helga watched, the bud nearest the open flower began to swell as though it were taking a breath; it pulsed momentarily like a small beating heart, and then it opened. Below it, like a chain reaction down the stem, every other closed bud swelled and then blossomed in succession.

“Harald claps for me when I do that one,” Hnossa whispered, and Helga could feel her little body trembling with effort – and with pride. Suddenly, she twisted sharply in Helga’s lap and faced her. “Please don’t tell anyone!” It was another whisper, but a whisper made loud and sibilant by fear. Hnossa’s petal-blue eyes were large with mortification. “Please,” she repeated. “I don’t want to go into the river.”

Helga felt a little piece of her heart break at those words; she squeezed the little girl against her bodice and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “No, nobody’s going into the river,” she whispered into the child’s hair, wondering how many witch-drownings the girl had witnessed before the age of nine. The fear in Hnossa’s voice made her feel sick in her stomach, and it made her next decision easier. Helga kissed the girl’s head again and then moved her off her lap; she held the bony little shoulders at arm’s length and met her eyes reassuringly. “Would you like to know a secret, Hnossa?” she smiled, and the little girl nodded. Helga looked around to be sure nobody was approaching them through the barley fields or from the forest; then she reached into her cloak and slipped out the long, straight piece of pear wood. She held it up at Hnossa’s eye level, and the little girl ran her gaze along its polished length, lingering for a moment on the etched figures and runes that formed a kind of grip at one end.

“What—” Hnossa began, but Helga hushed her gently. She picked up one of the flower stems from which Hnossa had plucked all the petals and bade her hold it out at arm’s length; then she drew the tip of her wand – for that is what it was – in a small circle around the bare stem.

“ _Bœta_ ,” Helga murmured. Hnossa gasped. As if drawn by a soft magnetism, a cloud of petals picked themselves up from the grass where they had lain and began to swirl around the empty stem. Then one by one, they reattached themselves to their former places until the flower in the little girl’s hand was whole and bobbing in the breeze with the weight of petals.

Helga turned her gaze from the flower to the child’s face. The smile blazing back at her was brighter than spring sunshine.  
  
  


* * *

Hunlaf the Woodcutter returned from his day’s trip to Norwic in the gloaming hour and was greeted by an owl whose repeated calls from the nearby woods seemed to chide him for coming home so late. He had gone to the town that morning to check up on the orphan boy who they’d placed in the care of St. Mary’s church months before, and he had told Helga he’d be back by dinner, but ah! There had been new potion ingredients at the market, all the way from Brittany, so she could forgive him the couple of hours. The sky was the soft color of new-churned cream with blackberries in, and he took a couple of deep, snorty breaths of the wild spring night air before setting off down the field row toward his cottage. It was his custom to apparate under the big oak, far from the prying eyes of the _úgaldr_ in the village, and walk the rest of the distance home. On a night like this one, it was no trouble – quite the opposite, in fact, a pleasant stroll.

“You can leave the stalking, Sœtr,” Hunlaf said amicably in the direction of the thickening barley to his right, where a rhythmic rustling had been gaining speed alongside him. “You’re no good at it, and besides, I was the one who dropped you in there after we apparated.” The rhythmic steps halted momentarily, were replaced by a second of frenzied shuffling, and then suddenly a small white dog with a brown head shot up out of the barley as though fired from a bow. His jump took him two feet into the air, his paws tucked neatly under him in the same way a deer tucks its hooves when it jumps a log. Hunlaf chuckled at him as he landed on the track at his master’s feet, immediately coiling his body down against the dirt again to prepare for another powerful jump. “Are you a crup or a hart, my friend?” the big man laughed, and the crup barked sharply in answer, banging his thick forked tail rapidly against the packed dirt path. “Come on, then,” Hunlaf beckoned, poking Sœtr in the muscular hind leg with his staff. “We’ve brought Helga a package of new ingredients from the town and we’ll see what she makes of them, all right?”

Sœtr the crup pounced straight up into the air with the force of a Norman longbow, his folded ears coming level with Hunlaf’s broad chest before gravity took over again; this was followed by two sharp staccato barks.

“Yes, I’m sure there’ll be something off the fire for you to chew on, you miserable eater of worlds,” Hunlaf chortled, walking on down the track. “I should have named you Sköll. You do nothing but swallow all my household goods, and you mock me while you do it.”

Sœtr trotted along ahead of his master, a self-satisfied grin stretching his muzzle and his forked tail quivering perpendicular to the ground.

“I wish you would swallow your tail instead like the Great Serpent,” Hunlaf went on as the thatched roof of his cottage came into view. “Then perhaps I wouldn’t have to worry about you running amok around the _úgaldr_ and giving us away. You know, one day they are going to finally believe that witless smith-boy when he prattles about your tails, and then you’ll be sorry, because I’ll feed you to them while Helga and I escape. Hmm.” He hid his grin behind layers of copper beard, and Sœtr (who never believed any of his master’s threats) charged on ahead toward the cottage, barking uproariously.

Helga was standing in the dooryard of the cottage waiting for them, and Hunlaf raised one bushy red eyebrow in surprise.

“My daughter always goes to sleep with the sun,” he said genially. “You can’t be her.” He tapped his staff sharply against some charred logs in a stone-lined depression in the soil, and a merry little fire sprang up where he had touched; Sœtr barked at it and hopped around as though he would like to bite the flames, and Hunlaf shooed him away. “Go on, you. Go thrash some poor rabbit to death and save me the trouble of feeding you out of the kitchen. Go on. And stop that barking, you’ll wake those children and Loki under the ground, too!” He watched as the crup pounced away into the dark trees behind the cottage, then turned back to his daughter. Helga was smiling, but she almost never stayed up past sunset, and he saw now that her wand was in plain sight in her hand. A second unusual thing for her. Hunlaf leaned his staff against the wall of the cottage and eased himself down onto the polished tree stump he kept there for a stool. “Now,” he grunted, waving for Helga to sit on the upturned basket beside him. “What’s got my daughter awake past her bed-time, hmm? Other than the fact that I was two hours late.”

Helga lowered herself onto the basket and took a few moments before answering him. “I found Hnossa under the oak tree this afternoon,” she began.

“Antagonizing something with sharp claws?” Hunlaf asked, unlacing the cloth that wrapped his calves.

“She was speaking to a grass snake.”

“Oh?” Hunlaf said automatically as he coiled the leather thongs around his hand. When Helga didn’t go on, he looked up at her. Her expression drove home her meaning. “ _Oh_ ,” he repeated, slowly laying aside his leg wraps and their thongs and interlacing his fingers on his ample stomach. “It’s like that, is it?”

“I’d never heard the Ormrmal before. It’s so….” She trailed off.

“Unsettling,” her father supplied, and she nodded. “I take it that’s not the only thing she can do?”

“When I prodded her, she blossomed a harebell bud for me,” Helga said pensively. “And then she was so afraid she started shaking. She begged me not to put her in the river.”

Hunlaf winced. “And naturally, you had to give her a little demonstration to show her she was in safe hands.”

“We can’t find a home for them elsewhere now,” Helga said softly. “Someone has to teach her how to use her magic, or she’ll be like that boy Grandmother told me about from her parents’ village.”

“You mean the one who held in his magic like holding his breath until he exploded, sunk two ships, and nearly killed half the villagers? Yes, someone will have to teach her.” Hunlaf stretched his feet toward the fire and flexed his ankles. “Is the boy magic as well?”

“I don’t think so,” said Helga, turning her wand over in her hands. “I asked her if anyone else in her family could do any of these things, and she said she had never seen it.”

Hunlaf sighed. “ _Úgaldr_ -born and now orphaned, with no wizarding family. Which means she knows nothing except what she’s been able to teach herself. No wand, no names for any of the things she can do.”

“She’ll learn quickly,” Helga replied, her smile returning somewhat. “She’s bright. And now that she has a name for what she’s been doing, I think she’ll be eager to learn everything she can.” They fell into a comfortable silence. The night breeze bent the fire to one side and then the other; it whiffled up inside the hood of Helga’s cloak, billowing it up around her hair and filling it with the scent of corn roses. Presently, Hunlaf groaned and stretched, then hauled himself up off the stump and reached for his staff.

“Well, come on then, daughter. Let’s get some sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.” He stretched his shoulder blades, said “Sœtr, _kom_!” and then tapped his staff sharply on the ground, eliciting a little puff of purplish light from the dirt beneath it. Helga could hear the sounds of the crup crashing through the undergrowth toward them as she got up from her seat. She pointed her wand at the fire.

“ _Sløkk_ ,” she murmured, and the fire disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Why so much to do tomorrow?” she asked as Sœtr skidded into the dooryard, looking disappointed that he’d missed the fire. Her father shooed the crup inside the cottage.

“Because,” he said to her over his shoulder, “you have to spend the morning with the little one in the forest hunting bowtruckles and finding some wood for her wand – and I have to spend the afternoon carving it.”


	2. Fairy Eggs

“Tell me again what they look like, Fru Helga?” Hnossa said, dangling from Helga’s arm as the young woman swung her over a tiny stream. Helga lifted her skirt and took the long step over the rivulet herself, trying to think how best to describe fairy eggs to the little girl. It was early morning in the forest beyond Little Witchingham, and the sun had not yet dispelled the mist that wove between the trees and clung to their hair. Somewhere deeper into the wood, a nightingale was singing out the last of its dawn song before retreating from the coming day’s heat. Helga had awakened Hnossa just before sunrise and told her that today would be the first day of her education as a witch; she had never seen the girl move toward the door faster. Along the way, they had talked without ceasing, about magical creatures, about when to use magic and when to use one’s hands, about the runes carved on Helga’s wand, and about a million other things. Helga had to see what things Hnossa had already discovered for herself and what things she would need to be taught, and Hnossa talked for the sheer pleasure of hearing her own voice. Presently they had arrived at the subject of locating fairy eggs. They were in the forest, of course, to get some wood suitable to make Hnossa a wand; but to get wand-quality wood, you had to seduce the bowtruckles, and to seduce the bowtruckles, you had to feed them.

“Fairy eggs look like….,” Helga began, and then paused. How _did_ one describe them? This was a little girl from a farmer’s cottage in a village surrounded by barley and cows. She would have never laid eyes on gemstones or a great lady’s jewelry, and so that comparison would be useless. After a moment’s thought, Helga knelt down to Hnossa’s eye level. “Have you ever been to a church with colored glass in the windows, Hnossa?”

“We came to the Witchingham church when Harald was baptised.”

“Well,” Helga went on, “imagine that someone took all that colored glass and broke it into a thousand tiny pieces, like barley grains – except each of those tiny pieces had a light inside it like a tiny star. And then imagine they took those pieces of glass to a waterfall where the sun was making a rainbow over the water, and they THREW those pieces up into the rainbow. Can you imagine what they would look like?”

Hnossa nodded in awe, her little mouth round and, for once, silent.

“Well, fairy eggs,” Helga said, standing back up and reaching for the girl’s hand, “look like that, except they’ll be in little clusters stuck to the backside of leaves on low-hanging plants. We need to collect two or three leaves’ worth – otherwise, the bowtruckles won’t let us anywhere near their trees.”

“How do we find the right leaves?” Hnossa asked. “There are a lot of leaves in a forest.”

Helga nodded. “Oh, yes, too many to search all of them. That’s why you first look for fairy _butter_ , and let it lead the way.”

“Fairy butter? What’s that?”

“It’s just a plant,” Helga smiled. “Like a mushroom or a lichen. It’s bright yellow like sunshine, and squishy like the inside of an egg, and it grows in wet places in the forest on dead wood. Fairies like to eat it, you see. And so they lay their eggs on leaves that are close by, which is why you will always stand a better chance of finding fairy eggs if you look for fairy butter first.”

The two of them spent a peaceful quarter of an hour strolling the bank of the small stream, looking for anything bright yellow that caught their attention. Around them, the forest was beginning to awake into cascades of birdsong as the sunlight dripped through the foliage and into nests. After a few false starts (a cluster of buttercups, a yellow wagtail hunting worms), they finally found what they were looking for at the base of an alder. Hnossa wrinkled her nose at the sight of the golden fungus.

“Yick,” she said flatly. “It looks like guts.” And indeed it did; the gelatinous yellow formation clung to the side of the tree in sinuous layers that twisted side to side around each other like the reticulations of a snake, looking for all the world like whipped butter that someone had forced through a tightly woven net. Helga chuckled at Hnossa’s expression.

“Well, the fairies think it’s delicious. Now, start turning over leaves – you’ll know the eggs when you see them.”

Hnossa looked dubious, but she began dutifully lifting nearby leaves, watching for any hint of sparkle.

In the end, they found a whole bush full of eggs about two cart lengths away from the fairy butter tree. Helga bade Hnossa hold out her cupped hands while she used her wand to dislodge the eggs from their leafy nurseries. The little girl’s palms held two and a half leaves full of the sparkling little grains, and as they stood up and headed back toward the stream, Hnossa stared in wonder at the glittering heap she held. It looked to her like starlight glinting off multicolored water.

Helga picked her up under her arms, careful not to jostle her hands, and lifted her back over the little stream.

“Now,” she instructed as she hopped the water herself, “tell it back to me while we walk, so I know that you’ve learned it.” She led Hnossa further into the woods, where the thick canopy of leaves almost muffled the sounds of the Witchingham chapel bell ringing Terce. Hnossa kept her eyes glued to her hands even as she answered; she didn’t want to drop a single egg.

“Fairy butter finds the fairy eggs. The eggs are the bowtruckles’ favorite thing to eat.”

“And what is a bowtruckle?” Helga prompted.

“A magical creature that lives in the trees. If a tree has bowtruckles in it, it’s good for making wands.”

“Very good,” Helga smiled. “And why do we need to bring fairy eggs to the bowtruckles?”

“Because they guard their tree,” Hnossa recited, still eyeing her handful of eggs. “If we try to take a branch, they might scratch or bite us, so we bring them their favorite food to show them we are friends, and that we only want a little piece of their home.”

“Good,” Helga grinned. “You remember what you’re taught easily, and you’ll make a fine witch.” She punctuated this with a light kiss on Hnossa’s wispy blonde hair.

They had now stopped at the edge of a grove of trees that seemed somehow different than the forest around them, although just how, Hnossa couldn’t have said. They were all the same kinds of trees as the rest of the wood – alder, blackthorn, sycamore, mountain-ash, oak – but they were bathed in a different sort of light here than anywhere else in the forest. The ground beyond the tips of Helga’s shoes changed abruptly from mixed grass and leaf litter to a thick, spongy moss that was an exquisitely vibrant shade of green. Hnossa made a little sound of wonderment.

“This is where they live,” she whispered, meaning it as a question but knowing it for fact as it left her mouth. Helga nodded.

“A witch or wizard will usually be able to feel them when they are near – if they learn to be silent and listen, like you are doing now. When I was a child, they lived all through this forest. Now they have retreated here to the center, to avoid the farmers clearing land at the edges. They go further west every year, and I’m afraid that one day there will be no bowtruckles in Anglia at all, they will all have fled to Wales.”

Hnossa stood quietly for a minute, taking in what she had heard. Then she pried her eyes up from her handful of eggs and asked, “Fru Helga, how do I choose which tree to take wood from?”

Helga’s grin widened. “ _You_ don’t.” When Hnossa wrinkled her face, perplexed, Helga laughed out loud. It was a rich and resonant sound in the quiet of the grove. “A witch or wizard shouldn’t choose their wood,” she explained. “You have to let the tree pick you.”

Hnossa looked dubious again, and Helga bent down to her and squeezed her shoulders.

“Close your eyes,” she advised. “Now, what you are going to do is walk into that grove with your eyes closed. You’ll take a few paces, and then you’ll listen.”

“To what?”

“To the sounds of the magic. If there is a tree in that grove that is meant to be your wand, it will call to you. You’ll hear it in your mind, the way you could hear your snake friend. You may hear it singing to you, or it may sound like the crackling of a fire or a wind rushing across your ears, but you will know from which direction it comes, and you’ll follow it. And the tree it takes you to will be the tree from which we’ll make your wand. Ready?”

Hnossa scrunched her hands closer around the heap of fairy eggs and nodded. Helga gave her a light push, and she stepped timidly onto the airy carpet of moss.

Almost immediately the air changed again. A wind from nowhere rustled through the heavy tree cover, rippling the leaf shadows across the moss and flickering sunlight sparks over the still dew-damp leaves. The light caught on the iridescent shards between Hnossa’s fingers and made it look as though she were holding liquid fire. Somewhere across the grove a bullfinch took off from a branch and fled the grove in a noisy flap of wings – as though it suddenly realized its presence there was no longer appropriate. Helga perceived nothing in that direction except the bird, but it was toward the bullfinch’s vacated tree that Hnossa began moving, and Helga saw the little girl’s posture stiffen with alertness. Smiling, she followed the child across the soundless moss floor of the grove until they stood looking up the straight trunk and into the wide-spreading vault of a large sycamore.

“This one,” Hnossa said reverently. Helga bent down and wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders.

“I had thought it might be a sycamore,” she smiled. Hnossa crinkled her nose, loosening the austere feeling of the atmosphere a bit.

“Why?”

“My grandmother carried a sycamore wand,” answered Helga, “and you remind me of her. Never wanting to be still. Always looking for new things. Easily tired of what you see often.”

“I would never be tired of looking at fairy eggs,” Hnossa said seriously. “Or of this grove.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” Helga laughed. “You would be tired of anything if you did it long enough. Now. Let’s wake the bowtruckles, shall we?”

Helga stood up and walked closer to the sycamore’s trunk. She reached out and placed her hand flat against the rippled bark. Hnossa opened her mouth to ask a question, but Helga brought her other hand up and placed a finger against her lips.

Without warning, three loose, leafy twigs dropped out of the tree canopy and landed on Helga’s arm. At least, that’s what Hnossa thought they were – until one of them stood up and opened a tiny mouth in a chattering series of squeaks.

“Fru Helga!” Hnossa gasped. She took a step backward as the three twig-like creatures all began chattering together, the first one climbing up Helga’s cloak toward her shoulder. They were the bright, acidic green of new spring leaves, and their black eyes glittered like beetle wings. Above their faces bobbed long, waxy leaf fronds that looked freshly sprouted; the bolder of the three, who was now chattering directly in Helga’s ear, had three of these fronds compared to his companions’ two. From the sounds they made, Hnossa couldn’t tell if they were angry, or only slightly miffed, or simply squeaky and frantic by nature.

“It’s alright, Hnossa!” Helga said, ducking her head down to her shoulder as the bowtruckle’s leaves tickled her neck. “These are the bowtruckles. Come on, say hello.”

“H…hello…,” said Hnossa unsurely. Helga reached up and scooted the more intrepid bowtruckle away from her collar.

“Kitla, behave yourself,” she ordered. The little creature responded by latching onto her hand with both tendril arms and squeaking faster. Meanwhile, the other two bowtruckles had been slowly clambering down her other arm, eyeing Hnossa with suspicion. Helga shook her arm to get them loose, but they held tight to her cloak and sleeve.

“What do we do now?” Hnossa gulped.

“ _We_ don’t. _You_ tell them why you’re here – and give them what you brought.” At the word _brought_ , the bowtruckle Kitla stiffened and rose to his full height, letting out a high-pitched chirp. Helga poked him. “Yes, Kitla, a _present_. Now attend the girl, you troublesome thing.” And she plucked him up by the shoulder joint and deposited him on the ground.

Hnossa took a deep breath. Looking down at the fairy eggs in her hands seemed to brace her. “My name is Hnossa,” she began, “and I’ve brought these fairy eggs for you.” She bent down and gently spilled the pile of glittering eggs onto the moss. The two smaller bowtruckles chirruped shrilly and set upon the eggs almost before she had retracted her hands. Kitla, however, tilted his head to one side and squeaked at her inquiringly. She looked at Helga, and Helga nodded encouragement. “I…hope we can be friends,” she went on, “and I wondered if I could have a small piece of your tree.”

Kitla reached over to the pile and took a tendril-ful of eggs and pushed them into his tiny mouth, his beetle-black eyes never leaving Hnossa.

“Please?” she added. “We won’t harm your tree. I only need a piece the size of my forearm.” She held out her arm to show him and the bowtruckle hopped onto it, still chewing his mouthful of eggs. Hnossa giggled; his root-like feet and tendril fingers tickled her skin. Kitla swallowed the eggs and looked up at Helga, squeaking questioningly.

“It’s all right, Kitla,” Helga soothed. “It will be just like last year when I came and took a piece of your friend’s oak tree over there for one of my neighbors. Do you remember?”

Apparently he did; Kitla squeaked a few rapid notes at his companions, then took himself another fistful of eggs before skittering back up into the tree. His companions followed him with bulging cheeks.

“Where are they going, Fru Helga?”

“They’re going to show us which branch we can take,” said Helga softly. As they watched the bowtruckles climbing the bark, she reached into her cloak and took out her wand. The three bowtruckles had congregated about halfway out onto the span of a branch about the breadth of a person’s leg. Kitla had stopped just before a large knot in the wood, and seemed to be indicating the area beyond where he sat.

“Tell him thank you,” Helga whispered to the little girl.

“Thank you very much, Kitla!” called Hnossa. “That is …a lovely branch.” The bowtruckle chattered amicably in return.

Helga nodded in approval. Then she lifted her wand and pointed it in the direction of the branch, slowly pulling the tip in a circular motion as though she were stirring a soup in the air.

“ _Taka_ ,” she said gently. Hnossa watched, mesmerized, as a ring of amber light appeared around the bore of the branch. The glow pulsed and waned, growing brighter and fainter and then brighter again, the ring becoming smaller each time. It began to sink into the wood like glowing honey, and Hnossa saw that the branch was being cut through like a log of butter. When the ring closed upon itself, the end of the branch dropped a few inches, having been neatly removed at the knot. Below Kitla’s dangling feet, the place where it had been attached was neatly healed over and already covered in new bark. A sprig stuck out from the rounded stump, and the tip of it was the bright green of new growth. Helga twitched her wand as though playing a fish on a line, and the free-floating piece of the branch drifted slowly earthward, landing at Helga’s direction in Hnossa’s outstretched hands. “ _Flett_ ,” she commanded, and the leaves and bark dropped cleanly away, leaving Hnossa holding a perfectly stripped sycamore log.

Up in the tree, Kitla was poking cautiously at the little green twig at the end of the amputated branch. Helga smiled up at him.

“No harm done, Kitla. See? It’ll grow back good as new, I made sure.” Kitla chattered down at her in response, and she laughed. “I _promise_. Now go on and take the rest of those fairy eggs to your nestlings, you great glutton.”

Chirping and squeaking, all three bowtruckles began scampering down the tree again to finish off the pile of fairy eggs lying on the moss. Helga patted Hnossa’s downy-soft hair and put away her wand.

“Come on. We’ll give this to my father, and by sunset, you’ll have your very own wand.”

* * *

The two of them took their time walking back through the forest toward Little Witchingham, as they had no schedule to meet now that the wand wood had been collected. It was not yet midday, but already the sun was bright overhead, piercing down through the tree canopy in golden bars that dotted the dim woodland. Hnossa carried her piece of sycamore wood with all the care of a girl holding her first child, although she did a great deal of skipping and hopping about with the lower half of her body to compensate. As they walked, she plied Helga with questions.

“Does your father make all the wands for Little Witchingham?”

“Yes, and he sells some to witches and wizards in Norwic as well.”

“Is it hard to make a wand?”

“It takes a great deal of practice, and a good teacher,” Helga explained. “Not everyone is able to do it, and some are better than others. You see, it’s not just about the wood. Every wand is made from good magical wood, but it also has something inside it that gives it life.”

“They’re alive?” Hnossa exclaimed, eyeing the protuberance of cloth where Helga’s wand tip stuck out against her cloak. Helga laughed.

“Not alive like you and me, but you could say that they have a sort of… quickness about them. The core of every wand is a strand of some magical substance – a dittany stalk, the heartstring of a dragon, the hair of a mermaid or a veela. And depending on the core and the wood, a wand may be better at one type of magic or another, or better suited to a certain kind of witch or wizard. A good wandmaker knows all these things about the materials they use, and the trick is getting the wood and the core paired up just so – and weaving them together with the right magic. And that is very complicated indeed. It’s why I leave wandmaking to Father – I have no desire to pore over complex details until my head swims.”

Hnossa looked as though her own little head was swimming, having just heard confirmation that things such as mermaids and dragons existed, and having no idea what a “veela” even was. She settled for the least overwhelming question she could think of.

“Why do we need a wand, Fru Helga? I’ve made the flowers blossom without one all this time.”

“That may fade as you grow older,” Helga said. “Most children can do magic quite well when they are small, almost as if there is too much magic in their little bodies and it must force its way out in great bursts. As you grow, and grow into your magic, doing it without a wand might become more difficult. And a wand helps you concentrate all your magic on one particular spell, and that makes it stronger.” She looked down at the girl, whose milky eyebrows were furrowed in thought. “Have you ever stood under a stream of water coming down from a high place in the rocks, Hnossa?”

“Yes,” the little girl nodded.

“Well, did you ever stand with the water tumbling onto your back and shoulders, and then hold out your arm so that the water followed the course of your arm and came off your fingers like a spout from a jug?”

“I like watching that!” Hnossa giggled, and Helga grinned.

“Me too. Well, that’s what a wand does for your magic. The magic in your body follows the wand out to its tip, and you can direct it exactly where you want it to go.”

“Will I— eeeEEK!!

The forest absorbed the echoes of the little girl’s squeal as both Helga and Hnossa stood stock still, staring at the charred hole that had just appeared in the trunk of an oak a few steps away. Little pieces of bark and wisps of smoke floated down in front of them. Helga had instinctively grabbed at Hnossa’s arm with her right hand; the other she now pressed over her heart as if she could slow its frantic pulsing by applying pressure. Hnossa was squeezing her chunk of sycamore wood as if it were a holy relic about to be plundered.

_BANG!_ Another hole burst through the slim trunk of a maple sapling further away, slicing it neatly in half. Hnossa gasped and looked up at Helga in a panic.

“Fru Helga!!”

“Stay behind me,” Helga said in a much calmer voice than what she felt. Herding the little girl behind her with one arm, she reached into her cloak and pulled out her wand. Slowly, the two of them crept toward a distant clearing from which more bursting sounds could be heard. As they drew nearer, they realized that there were voices mingled in with the bursts, two voices that both sounded very bright and carefree, and the words were intermingled with spates of laughter.

“Not half bad!” called one of the voices.

“Yes, but you missed me again!”

“Only to get you to lower your guard!”

Helga crept up to a large spreading oak at the edge of the clearing, motioning to Hnossa to keep well behind the trunk. Cautiously, they both peeked out around the tree and looked into the clearing.

In the pool of sunlight that filtered down through the open space in the forest canopy, two boys were galloping about like spring colts, trampling wildflowers and white mushroom caps beneath their slippered feet and shrieking with laughter. One of them had a round face and thick black curls and looked to be about Hnossa’s age; the other boy was taller, perhaps a little older, with a wild fringe of brassy hair that kept falling into his eyes. They had rips in their tunics, the cloth wrapping their legs was loosened from much cavorting, and they had clearly been playfighting. Both carried wands.

“ _Discutio!_ ” cried the dark-haired boy, and a turquoise jet of light shot from the tip of his wand. His companion dodged sharply to the left, and the jet slammed into a rowan trunk across the clearing, bursting another charred hole in the bark.

“You’re an idiot, and I should never have taught you that!” the taller boy complained, but he was masking a grin. “You can’t use _discutio_ for sport, you’ll blow my head off!” He didn’t look particularly worried that this would actually happen. The shorter boy huffed.

“Well, so far, the only thing I cast at you that actually worked was the one that turned your feet into duck flippers. I had to try _something_ else!”

“Yes, _thank_ you for reversing that, and happily it only took three days for you to figure out how!” Both boys were laughing now, and Helga loosened her white-knuckle grip on her wand. Just children. _Magical_ children, mind you, who were very recklessly playing at dueling, but children nonetheless. Helga didn’t recognize them – she knew all of the magical families in her village, and these were not boys from east Little Witchingham.

“All right, then, show me another!” the round-faced boy countered. His older friend put out a leg, making a courtly bow, and grinned.

“If you insist. _Ventus!_ ” He brought his wand swirling widely around his head, coming to a stop pointed directly at his companion. Nothing visible appeared at his wand tip; but the round-faced boy’s dark curls began to whip wildly about his head as though caught in a strong wind. He squinted his eyes, pursed his lips, and soon was holding up both hands in an effort to shield himself from the now gale-force blast of air his friend was sending in his direction. Helga watched until she saw the boy’s feet beginning to lose purchase on the thick grass. Then she squeezed Hnossa’s shoulder reassuringly and stepped out into the clearing, wand at the ready.

“ _Stǫðvið!_ ”

The swirling wind died abruptly at the flick of Helga’s wand, and both boys snapped to attention, their eyes wide and startled. Helga crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Lady,” the older boy stammered automatically, going into a confused half-bow. After a second’s pause he leaned over and nudged his friend, who hadn’t moved, until he mimicked the bow. “I …regret if we have done injury to you or your ward in the course of our sport,” he muttered, in a very different voice to the one he’d been using with his friend. Helga saw that this was a boy who had been taught rules of decorum, for both the magical and non-magical world. She smiled at him reluctantly.

“No injury,” she admitted. “Only frightened us. But I worry that you do not know where you are. There is a village just beyond the fringe of this wood which is half _úgaldr_ , and you might have been seen by them and had a great deal of explaining to do.”

“Ug-what?” whispered the dark-haired boy to his friend.

“It’s the Danes’ word for non-magic people,” the older child explained. To Helga, he said, “Those of us who are lettered in Latin call them _mundanus_.”

“You are both lettered?” Helga asked, surprised. The smaller boy shrugged.

“I, only a little. Just what my father had learned here and there. Aluric is the educated one.”

The boy called Aluric stepped forward, twirling his wand skillfully about his fingers before presenting it, handle outward, to Helga. “Aluric son of Alwin, of Flictewicce. My father, God give him peace, was lord of Flictewicce. My companion….” He held out an arm and beckoned his friend forward.

“Saeric, of Schornecote.” He tried unsuccessfully to mimic his friend’s wand twirl, eventually just holding out the handle like Aluric had done. “Son of Stephanus the freeman,” he added, as it seemed like he should say something else. Helga put her wand away, and they did likewise.

“Well, I am Helga Hunlafsdottir, of Little Witchingham, which is the village you were so close to without knowing it. And this is Hnossa, my student.” Hnossa crept out from behind Helga’s skirt, eyeing the boys suspiciously.

“I’m going to have a wand made from this,” she said by way of introduction, squeezing the log as if she thought they might steal it. Aluric put on a charming smile.

“Then let us hope it will be worthy of its holder.”

“Are we so very near Witchingham?” Saeric interjected, looking suddenly brighter. Helga nodded.

“We could walk out of the woods and reach my cottage before the chapel rings Sext.”

“Then we are almost there, Aluric!” Saeric blurted. “I got us there after all!”

“Where’s _there_?” Helga smiled. The younger boy had lovely hazel eyes that were only readily appreciable when he beamed as he was doing now.

“Botuna!” the boy chirped. “The last place we asked, they said Botuna was just the other side of Witchingham. Come on!” Without warning, he grabbed Aluric by the wrist and took off at a tear toward the edge of the clearing. Helga pulled out her wand and snapped it in their direction.

“ _Hǫndla!_ ” Immediately both boys stopped short, the backs of their tunics pricked upward and outward as if grabbed by an invisible parent’s hands. Helga twitched her wand upward, and the boys rose a few inches into the air as if attached to it by a string.

“WhoaaahhHH!”

“Noooo no no, ground, ground!!”

Helga pulled her wand in a slow circle, and the boys followed it in a dangling path until they were back in front of her, where she put them down gently on the grass. Saeric looked simply confused; Aluric looked as if he’d just been threatened with hellfire and had escaped by a single fervent prayer.

“Why would you do that??” he gasped, clutching handfuls of grass.

“One thing at a time, boys,” Helga began. Using the same incantation she had just used on the children, Helga aimed her wand into the brush at the edge of the clearing and twitched. After a few moments’ rustling, a large log and two rounded lumps of sandstone came floating out of the treeline. Helga plopped them down facing each other, with a few feet of space between. She sat down on the log and patted the space beside her for Hnossa to climb up. The boys looked at each other, shrugged, and took seats on the two stones. As an indication that she did not intend to levitate them again soon, Helga put her wand down on the log on her other side, away from her hands. Then she laced her fingers in her lap.

“Now. Saeric. What’s so important that you must get to Botuna so quickly?”

Saeric looked surprised but pleased that she had addressed the question to him instead of his older friend. “My family is there, lady Helga,” he said slowly, unsure where to begin.

“You said you came from Schornecote? That’s almost in the West country.”

“I was born there,” the boy clarified. “It was where my father settled when he became a freeman after his service to the lord Alward ended. But he was born in Botuna, and he told me that should I ever find myself without him, I should go to his family there.”

“And… you have found yourself… without him?” Helga asked gently.

“He died of the spattergroit,” Saeric murmured. “In the winter. The _mundani_ thought it was the …what do they call it, Aluric?”

“Mæseles,” supplied Aluric. “And you didn’t disabuse them of that notion, of course.”

“Right. Didn’t matter what took him, he died the same.”

“Fru Helga, what’s spattergroit?” whispered Hnossa. Helga smoothed her hair.

“It’s a sickness that only witches and wizards can get, just like only the _úgaldr_ get sick with the mæseles.” She turned back to Saeric. “So when your father passed, you began traveling here to find his family. How did the two of you come to be traveling together, then? Flictewicce isn’t close to Schornecote.”

“I followed the old Roman road that came out of Cirencestre – I walked it until it split away near Oxenaforda, and then I just crossed and kept going north and east, asking directions along the way. One of the places I stopped was Flictewicce.”

“Which is where he collected me,” Aluric took over. He seemed to have recovered from his fears of being levitated. “My father had died last spring, and my rotten brother was lord in Flictewicce, which gave me no incentive at all to stay. I could do worse than to travel with Saeric here. I thought perhaps his father’s family would suit me better than my own.”

Helga regarded the boys quietly for a moment or two. They were an unlikely pair – a lord-ling and a freeman’s son – and at a glance seemed a very unequal partnership. But Helga suspected that they were now bonded inseparably by the simple fact that they needed each other on an elemental level. Saeric was desperate for someone to look up to, and Aluric (though he would likely never admit it) was being validated and praised for the first time in his life. Helga smiled warmly at them.

“Yes, you could certainly do worse. Come on, then. Home to the cottage.” She stood up and pocketed her wand as Hnossa tumbled down off the log behind her. The boys got up, each looking to the other for instruction.

“Not to Botuna?” Aluric said finally. Helga laughed.

“Eventually. But it’s nearly Sext and you couldn’t go wrong with a midday meal, now could you?”

“Do you have honey?” Saeric gasped. “I haven’t had honey since we left Aluric’s home.”

“If my brother didn’t eat it all before we get there,” Hnossa muttered darkly, shifting the weight of her sycamore log and marching off toward the far edge of the clearing. Helga gestured to the boys, and the three of them followed Hnossa’s stomping figure into the forest toward Little Witchingham.

* * *

An hour later, the dooryard of Hunlaf the Woodcutter was in happy chaos as the children worked off their lunch in a frantic game of chase. Helga finished a last sip of strawberry juice and stepped into the dim, sleepy interior of her father’s workshop, closing the door behind her. Hunlaf was paring down the sycamore cutting with a sharp chisel, occasionally working it one-handed while he took a bite of the hunk of bread that sat on the table beside him collecting sawdust. He could easily have brought the wood down to wand-size with one movement of his ash-staff, but he had told Helga long before that he preferred to do the first cuttings by hand instead of by magic. It was his way, he said, of talking to the wood. Helga watched him take another bite.

“One day you’re going to mistake which hand is for eating and which is for cutting, and I’ll have to magic your tongue back on.”

“So you’ve told me,” Hunlaf grinned through his copper beard (which was now peppered with flecks of shaved wood). He didn’t turn to look at his daughter, but she didn’t need him to turn to know his face. “So your mother told me, too, and in twenty years it hasn’t happened yet.”

Helga sat down softly on the heather-filled sack seat behind him, careful not to rouse Sœtr with her motion. The crup lifted his head and half-opened one eye, but when she stroked his cheek gently with two fingers, he nuzzled back down into the sack and resumed his slumber.

“When you went into the forest today,” Hunlaf went on, still carving, “there were only two children in our care. Now there are four. Are you multiplying them as an experiment with a spell?”

“I found them dueling in a clearing,” Helga chuckled. “They very nearly took off Hnossa’s head with a stray jinx. I had to tell them how close they were to a village.”

“The dark one is from the West country,” Hunlaf expounded. “The fair one is the child of an eorl from down Lunden-way, I wager. What are they doing in the Danelaw alone?”

“They’re orphaned,” Helga explained. “Saeric was trying to reach Botuna because his father had family there. He met Aluric along the way and they threw in their lot together.”

“Botuna?” Hunlaf said, and this time he turned around. “Oh, daughter, you’re going to have to have a hard talk with them tomorrow.”

“Why? Can’t they go to Botuna?”

“Oh, they can go to Botuna,” Hunlaf sighed, shifting his bulk in his seat and half-turning back to his carving. “But the only thing they’ll meet will be cats and owls. Botuna was raided a week ago. I heard it in Norwic.”

“Raided?” Helga gaped. “By ours, or theirs?” she asked, meaning whether it had been done by Saxons or Danes. Hunlaf shrugged his big shoulders.

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“No indeed.” The woodcutter scratched sycamore shavings out of his beard and ate the last of his bread. “I think most everyone was killed or taken, and the ones who weren’t are long fled. I’ll open the fire tonight and ask Crickomer Rook in Norwic if any of the boy’s family fled there – slim chance, but better than no chance. But I fear that if that boy had some family there once, he won’t find them now.”

They were quiet together for a few minutes; the only sounds in the workshop were the _scrape scrape_ of Hunlaf’s tools and the occasional soft huff of air through Sœtr’s nostrils. Helga patted him gently on his silky head, running her middle finger from his nose-tip back along the white stripe that divided his face neatly in half. His forked tail thumped once in his sleep.

“I suppose now I’ll have three students, then,” she said matter-of-factly. Hunlaf grunted, although whether in response to her or to a hard place in the wood, she couldn’t tell.

“I expected nothing else,” was all he said. Then, after a few more minutes of silence, he added, “Speaking of your students, have you thought what we’re going to put in the core of this wand?”

“Oh,” said Helga. She hadn’t, as a matter of fact. “I assumed you’d chose something out of your box of ingredients, whatever you thought best.”

“Used my last unicorn hair on Sönnungr’s wand two weeks ago. Should’ve bought some more cores when I was in Norwic, but Crickomer’s wife had just brought a new cheese up from the cellar, and—”

“—and you promptly got distracted from the market, I know.” Helga grinned at her father, who was nothing if not consistent. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to make another trip.”

“Unless you want to _catch_ her something,” Hunlaf suggested. “I saw a family of unicorns over by King’s Lenn when I visited Ivar – although, I admit, I don’t think unicorn would be right for this wand or this girl. An augurey feather, maybe?”

“Maybe,” said Helga dubiously as Sœtr climbed into her lap searching for a new sleeping position. “But they’re so mournful, I don’t know that would fit her either.” Her hand was bumped impatiently by the sleepy crup, and she absently began petting him as she ran through lists of animals in her head.

“Bicorn horn?” she suggested. “They just finished shedding a couple of months back, I might still find some in the forest.”

Hunlaf grunted and blew a drift of shavings off his table onto the floor. “Can’t say I think that fits her either, and it certainly doesn’t go well with sycamore.”

Helga leaned back on the heather-sack and sighed; this disrupted the topography of her lap, and Sœtr gave a short, offended bark and hopped off onto the floor. Hunlaf scooped him up and ruffled his neck fur before walking over to his whetstone to sharpen his chisel.

“Yah, it was time for you to wake up anyway, you lazy beast,” he growled good-naturedly. The crup threw his head back and made a sound that was half bark, half howl before disappearing with a loud _pop!_ He reappeared on the table next to the whetstone. Hunlaf tapped him reprovingly on the snout. “What have I told you about getting on my table next to sharp objects? Shoo!” He waved his big, calloused hand, and Sœtr leapt from the table. Forked tail held perpendicular, he wandered underneath the carving table to sniff about for bread crumbs. Hunlaf shook his head. “That animal gets into more trouble than Hnossa. Between the two, I’m surprised the cottage still stands.” He began sharpening the chisel, and then he suddenly halted. He placed the chisel down gently and turned to face Helga very slowly.

“What?” Helga asked, because there was an odd look on Hunlaf’s face.

“Very alike, the girl and Sœtr, hmm?” was all he said at first. Helga shrugged.

“I suppose so,” she replied. Under the table Sœtr’s tail wagged a couple of times at the mention of his name, but his search for crumbs went on uninterrupted. Hunlaf raised one bushy red eyebrow.

“Powerfully magical little beast, he is….” The woodcutter nodded his head ever so slightly in the crup’s direction and began to stroke his beard, separating one long russet hair from the rest and uncurling it to its full length. Then he pulled it gently – once, twice, thrice – not hard enough to pluck it, but enough that a little patch of his face rose into a little peak where the hair was anchored. Helga caught on, then.

“Aahh,” she smiled. “Yes, I bet he has more magic in one whisker than a bicorn has in its whole horn.”

Hunlaf grinned and stepped away from the table, bending slightly to get a good look at the crup underneath. “Oh, Sœtr….”

The crup’s forked tail stopped in mid-wag and shot into a straight vertical alignment at the tone in his master’s voice. Sœtr hopped, all four paws leaving the ground for a moment as he turned in midair. He landed in full alert, his tail immobile, staring at Hunlaf.

“Who’s a good boy, Sœtr?” Hunlaf began.

Sœtr let out a growling _ruff!_ and then immediately began trotting toward the door, dodging Hunlaf’s hands as he broke into a run and shot between the woodcutter’s legs. Helga threw herself in front of the door and scooped up the wiggling crup as he made a dive for the exit.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered, tucking him against her hip. Sœtr made a series of huffing sounds as he tried to wriggle free; then he seemed to remember that he was magical, and he disapparated from her grasp and reappeared behind her, aiming again for the door. “Ugh, fine,” Helga sighed and pulled out her wand. “ _Kyrr!_ ”

The air distended in a ripple from her wand tip; Sœtr froze in place as it washed over him, one paw lifted in step and his muzzle touching the door to nudge it open. His eyes followed his mistress as she bent down and picked him up, but the rest of his body was immobile. Helga placed him on the table, and she and Hulaf bent down to meet him at eye level. His whiskers floated gently around his snout as though under water, but for all other purposes he might have been a statue. Hunlaf chuckled and took his staff from the corner.

“Now, let’s try that again, eh, Sœtr?”

The crup hissed out a whiny huff of breath that said he most certainly did not want to try that again. His deep brown eyes followed Hunlaf’s every movement.

“It’s alright, Sœtr,” Helga soothed. “We just need two whiskers, and you won’t even feel it.”

The frozen crup snorted, clearly not believing her. Hunlaf stepped forward with his ash staff.

“ _Taka_ ,” he said, drawing the head of the staff in a circle around Sœtr’s two longest whiskers. As it had done for Helga in the forest, a small ring of light appeared around the base of each whisker, but this time the light sank down into the follicle and disappeared under the skin. A moment later it resurfaced as a small orb, each orb pushing the whisker out whole and unbroken. As the whiskers floated toward Hunlaf’s hand, new whiskers germinated in their vacated places and within seconds were as long as the original whiskers had been. Hunlaf plucked the removed whiskers out of the air and scratched his crup behind the folded ear. “There, now was that so hard?”

Sœtr gave a sharp, abrasive snort to imply _Yes, actually, it was_.

Helga gave him a loud kiss on the forehead, laughing as she pulled away. “Thank you, Sœtr, for being such a good boy. You’re free to go. _Stǫðvið.”_

Before her wand had even finished moving, Sœtr had shot off the table like an arrow. When he landed, he made sure to bark acerbically four or five times, hopping stiffly and vibrating his forked tail in righteous indignation. He shook himself all over as if ridding his coat of water, threw his head back, and howled; then he shot out of the woodshop as fast as he could run, leaving the shop door bouncing against the frame behind him. Helga put her wand away.

“And now he’s going to go sit under a log in the forest and ignore you when you call for him.”

Hunlaf gave a deep belly-laugh. “He’ll be back when he’s hungry and can’t be bothered to catch his own dinner.” Still laughing, the woodcutter ambled back over to his chair. He sat down with a groan. “Alright, daughter,” he grunted, placing the two crup whiskers gently in a box at the far end of the table and latching the lid. “Go out there and make sure the children haven’t lit the meadow ablaze. A couple of hours of quiet, and I’ll have a wand ready for the little one.”

Helga leaned down and kissed her father’s russet head.

“Just promise me you’ll come out with all your fingers still attached.”

* * *

The sound of the Witchingham chapel bell ringing Vespers echoed across the barley fields as an evening breeze whiffled across the meadow from the northeast, carrying with it a trace of salt air from the sea mingled with heady cornroses and early lavender. The wind played with the fire Helga had just lit out in the dooryard and ruffled the loose hair around her temples as she ducked inside the cottage to retrieve the loaf of bread she had sliced a few minutes before. She picked it up by the corners of the white cloth that wrapped it and carried it back outside to where the children sat around the fire watching steam rise from the stew pot that hung there. Harald was giddy as ever at the sight of dinner, and Hnossa and Aluric were giggling at some joke she had missed while she was inside. Saeric looked glum. Helga had taken him aside earlier and explained to him what Hunlaf had heard about Botuna – she had told him that they would try to find out if any of his people had gone to Norwic, but that they weren’t good odds. He had understood, and he had taken it generally well – after all, these weren’t people he had ever met. But he had traveled an awfully long way to be given such news, and (Helga suspected) the loss of these people probably brought up his feelings about the loss of his father.

The sky in the west over the village was turning from daylight blue to a creamy orange, while the horizon in the east had just begun to deepen into cornflower. Helga tapped the spoon that rested in the stewpot with her wand, and the spoon began to stir the soup within in a steady circle. She placed the loaf of bread on a stone beside the fire within easy reach of the children’s hands and began to pass out wooden bowls. Aluric was in the process of showing Hnossa his wand while she waited anxiously for her own to come out of Hunlaf’s workshop.

“It’s made of elm wood,” he was saying as Hnossa took it from his hands. It was slender and elegantly carved, and both the fire and the sunlight glittered on its polished bore. At the handle end was a smooth garnet, perfectly round and so deeply red that it looked like dark heart-blood. Helga was impressed.

“It’s beautiful,” she said softly, passing out slices of bread. Aluric nodded as if this was the expected response.

“My father had it specially made – that garnet is a piece of our family’s ancient treasure. He collected the wood and the core himself, and then brought the materials to a wandmaker in Lundenburh who is supposed to be the best in the business. He wanted to ensure the craftsmanship was exceptional.”

“What’s inside it?” Hnossa asked as she gave the wand back to its owner. Aluric lifted his chin regally.

“The tail hair of a centaur,” he said with great pride. Helga twitched her wand toward the cottage door and held out her hand as a jug of milk floated out to her. Both her eyebrows were raised high.

“How ever did your father get that? Centaurs are not the most social of creatures.”

“No, they aren’t. My father spoke sometimes to a centaur who lived in the forest near Flictewicce. The rest of his herd were suspicious, but this one was friendly enough – for a centaur. My father respected him, and asked him sometimes for advice in matters of governing his land. When I was born, he asked him if he might comb his tail and take a hair that might come loose, and the centaur obliged him.” He put the wand away as Helga handed him a cup of milk. Saeric, looking a little less glum now, produced his own wand and passed it over to Hnossa.

“Here’s mine!” he smiled. “It’s made of willow. It’s not fancy like Aluric’s, but Father told me that willow is a wood that doesn’t like to be tampered with. He says it’s better when you don’t carve it or polish it too much. Leave it looking like the tree it came from.”

Hnossa turned it over in her hands, examining the curves and bumps of the wood that had been sanded smooth but left to follow its own grain. “It has freckles!” she exclaimed, giving it back to him. Indeed, the pale wood was dotted with tiny spots of darker grain that covered it in no discernable pattern. Saeric grinned.

“It matches me, I suppose. The core is a dittany stalk,” he added sheepishly, as though he was embarrassed by it. It was hardly as impressive as a centaur hair, after all. Helga gave Hnossa her milk and patted Saeric’s hand.

“So is mine,” she reassured him.

“Really?” Saeric said, brightening. Helga nodded.

“Really. And don’t ever let anyone tell you that makes it a lesser wand. You’ve seen me use mine today, haven’t you? HARALD, stop eating your sleeve!” She reached over and tugged the little boy’s sleeve hem out of his mouth and replaced it with another piece of bread before he could start whining. When she turned back to Saeric, he was looking at his wand thoughtfully.

“I’m awfully bad at dueling,” he said dubiously, and Aluric took a drink of milk to hide the fact that he agreed. Helga chuckled.

“Well, so you might be. But if you have a dittany and willow wand, then your magical strength won’t lie there anyway. You have the wand of a healer, Saeric. It’s no wonder you struggle to use magic for sport or combat. I wager you’ll be an easy hand at healing spells.”

“Good, he can use them to heal up all Hnossa’s wounds that she gets from running about with this.”

The five faces at the fire turned to the workshop door, where Hunlaf had just emerged, covered in sycamore shavings and carrying something wrapped in a piece of cloth. Hnossa jumped up from her seat, her little hands clenched in fists under her chin.

“Is it ready??”

In lieu of an answer, Hunlaf walked across the dooryard to the fire and held out the parcel in front of him. With great ceremony, he pulled back one flap of cloth, then the other. Hnossa gasped. The wand lying in Hunlaf’s outstretched hands was utterly straight and had very little taper along its smooth white length. The grain of the wood was shimmery and quite visible, looking like raindrops hitting the surface of a pond. Here and there a hair-thin dark streak cut through the light wood. Hunlaf had left the knot intact, and it formed a rounded pommel at the handle end of the wand. Hnossa’s milky-blue eyes were as round as cart wheels.

“Can I—?” she stammered.

“Go on,” said Hunlaf, grinning in spite of himself. Hnossa reached out a timid hand and took the wand slowly from its cloth. As soon as her fingers had closed all the way around it, a shower of soft blue sparks gusted out along the whole length of the wand and fluttered down to the packed earth of the dooryard like a rain of glowing dandelion seeds. Wherever they landed, tiny blue flax blossoms sprang up.

“It knows who it belongs to,” Hunlaf said quietly. At the fire, Harald stopped eating long enough to clap and giggle at his sister’s magic. Hnossa was staring at her new wand in awe, and Helga leaned down to kiss her on the top of the head before guiding her back to her seat. She handed her father a wooden bowl and tapped the spoon in the pot to stop it stirring.

“Well now we’re all here, let’s eat before the sun sets and we can’t see our stew. Hnossa, dearest, you’ll have to put that down until you’ve finished eating.”

“I’m a real witch now,” the little girl whispered, reluctantly tucking the wand tight between her knees as Helga filled her bowl with soup. The young woman smiled at her meaningfully.

“You’ve _always_ been a real witch. Now you get to start learning what to do with it.”


	3. The Cat That Flew

The soft Easter-month awakening of the countryside around Little Witchingham soon exploded into the joyous cacophony of Milking-month, the bright air thickening with raucous choirs of songbirds, the calls of hawks, and the lowing of well-fed cows complaining of full teats. The meadows outside the bounds of Witchingham farmland were laid with a rich yellow blanket of cowslip, wood sorrel, and oxlip blossoms, and the hawthorns in the hedgerows quivered as an army of honeybees worked away at the snow-white blooms that filled their branches. The Danelaw warmed toward the gentle heat of early summer as the villagers of Little Witchingham began to draw their looms out of the weaving houses into the sunshine to work the piles of new-sheared wool their flocks had given them.

In the cool of the deep forest clearing, under the watchful black eyes of a few hundred curious bowtruckles, Helga Hunlafsdottir had spent the better part of a month cultivating the skills of her three magical wards with all the care given by the villagers to their flocks and planting. The clearing had proved the perfect place for lessons – an open space broad enough to give room for movement (and for play), at a far enough distance from the village that accidental discovery could be avoided, and with an atmosphere soaked in the magic of the trees themselves. It had been Helga’s first task to determine what each child could already do. The boys, having been born to wizarding families, had a longer list of spells they could perform without instruction, and Helga had asked each of them to show her everything they had been taught. Aluric knew more advanced spells than most children, and had a flair for the elegant and the bold; but it was soon clear to Helga that his education, while challenging, had not been consistent. This was a boy who had been taught whatever he _asked_ to be taught, but had not always been instructed in the simpler, more _ordinary_ types of magic that he found dull. He could blast the head off a wildflower at twenty paces with a jinx, and could whip Helga’s wand out of her hand without speaking the spell aloud – but he had never been taught to repair a rip in his cloak or to pour a drink without touching the jug.

In these softer and more practical sorts of spells, Saeric far outstripped his friend. Here was a child who, while not precisely poor, had never had a servant to take any task off his hands. Saeric could mend, cook, fetch, and put together almost as well as Helga herself. Of course, if he were ever to be attacked, he would be a dead boy. He had no head at all for either offensive or defensive spells, and at one point during a lesson actually knocked himself ten feet across the mossy clearing while trying to conjure a protective shield.

“You two are going to have to live together the rest of your lives,” Hnossa told them matter-of-factly after that particular mishap.

“And why is that?” Aluric had scoffed, to which Hnossa had simply shrugged.

“Because he’s as defenseless as a new lamb, and you’ll starve to death without him.”

“ _Ha_ ,” Aluric had answered, pretending offense while helping Saeric up, but they had all gotten a good laugh from it once they ascertained that Saeric didn’t have a head injury.

Hnossa, as Helga had predicted, was learning rapidly and confidently. Despite having absolutely no magical upbringing and knowing no words for many of the things she could do, Helga found that the little girl had already taught herself to summon objects and to manipulate things, plants in particular. The task now was to teach her to do those familiar things with a wand in her hand, and to give her the same basic repertoire of spells that the boys had learned from their parents and families. By the middle of the month, when the lowing of the cows in the village had reached its bellowing zenith, Helga had ensured that all three children knew how to lift and move an object, how to summon it across a space to their hands, how to repair simple damage to clothes or utensils, and how to take the wand from the hand of someone who threatened them. “You should never use magic for harm, or to give yourself power over others,” she told them often, “but if you are in danger, then you must protect yourselves. And the best way to do that is to take away the other person’s means to harm you.”

“Taking off their _head_ would also accomplish that,” Aluric had smirked, and Helga had bent down to meet his eyes.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But in addition to being cruel, that would also leave you with a dead body at your feet and a great deal of explaining to do when the _úgaldr_ show up. Hmm?”

Aluric had pursed his lips roguishly, but he had nodded.

As the month wore on, Helga did more than teaching in the bowtruckles’ grove – she also did a great deal of learning herself. After a day of instructing the children in spells and magical concepts, she and Hnossa would sit across from the boys and eat the food she had packed while the boys taught them words and spells from the Saxon part of the wizarding world. Helga and Hnossa learned Latin and Saxon incantations and terminology, and they in turn taught the boys the corresponding words in Norse. They came to the consensus that Norse spells were shorter and often required less effort to speak – but that the Latin incantations did have a certain flair and musical sound about them.

“It sounds so much grander to say _protego_ than to say _skjalda_ ,” Aluric pointed out, and Hnossa agreed with him. Helga and Saeric were of the opposite opinion.

“But it takes longer to say _protego_ ,” countered Saeric.

“If I need to shield myself,” Helga said with a nod, “I’d choose the shorter – and the more natural – word. I don’t care about being grand.”

“I do,” Hnossa murmured. “I’ve never been grand. It’s nice to feel that I am sometimes.” She plucked a piece of clover from the edge of the moss and squeezed it until the tip erupted into a purple blossom. Helga smiled softly at her.

“Well, if it makes you happier, Hnossa, then you say your spells in Latin. Nobody’s harmed by it, and it may improve your abilities by making you bolder.”

* * *

As Milking-month drew to a close, Helga had begun to think about what subjects she might teach the children next. She supposed at some point she really ought to teach them how to travel using magic – but given Aluric’s brashness, this might be best left until he had developed more self-control. In the end she settled on teaching them to identify magical plants and prepare simple potions; but first, she would test them on their basics and ensure they were all proficient enough to build on them.

“I have one final task for you,” she told them all after a long morning of summoning stones, repairing broken branches, and disarming each other. Saeric had only just recovered his wand from a mud puddle at the edge of the grove, and he gave her a nervous wince as he wiped the mud from it with his tunic hem.

“Floating things?” Hnossa asked, as she had been keeping track and knew this was the one lesson they had not yet discharged for her that day. Helga nodded.

“But not just any things,” she went on. “We’ve worked our way up from floating small things like flowers all the way to floating large things like that stone over there. But I want to see if you can do something you haven’t tried before.” The children exchanged glances as Helga walked over to the shade of the sycamore from which Hnossa’s wand had come. “Kitla?” the young woman called, and held out her arm. After a few moments had passed in silence, there was a rustling in the foliage above her, followed by the _whiipp_ of a green twiggy bundle dropping down onto her hand. Kitla tossed his waxy leaves, now wider and darker green, out of his eyes and chattered at the children amicably. Helga walked him back over to her students.

“Kitla is a living creature. He will therefore require more concentration and magical strength on your part if you want to float him. And while you are being strong, you must also be gentle – we don’t want to send Kitla crashing into a tree trunk, now do we?”

All three children shook their heads, and Kitla squeaked a vehement negative from his perch on her hand.

“Now before we begin, a few items. First of all, this charm does not work – or at least, will not work _well_ – on large creatures. If you encounter, for instance… a bear, please do not float him. You will only succeed in making him very irritable indeed, and when his paws come back to earth after about ten seconds, that is about how long you will have to run before he eats you.”

At this image Aluric snorted in amusement, Saeric looked horrified at the thought of being eaten, and Hnossa raised an eyebrow as if unsure why she would ever be in such a situation to begin with. Helga hid a grin and went on.

“Secondly, this charm will NOT float a human. Let me make that very clear. And if I catch any of you trying it on little Harald when we get home, you will be in a great deal of trouble. All right?”

“Yes,” they all chorused, and Hnossa kicked at the moss and tried to pretend that hadn’t been precisely her plan.

“Good. All right, Saeric? You first. I want to see if you can float Kitla from my hand over to that tree stump.” Helga pointed to a stump about ten feet away, and Kitla leaned out from her palm to survey the distance. He looked at it twice before chattering at her rapidly, and Helga tapped one of his leaves playfully. “It’ll be alright. I promise. If any of them drop you, I’ll catch you.”

The bowtruckle gave one more dubious squeak before going to stand rigid in the center of her outstretched palm.

“The first spell lifts, the second spell moves,” Saeric was murmuring to himself, twitching his wand in little practice motions as he stepped forward.

“In Norse, if you please,” Helga added, “since you seem to find it more comfortable.” Saeric nodded. He licked his lips nervously, and then raised his wand toward the bowtruckle (whose glittering black eyes were shut tightly in anticipation).

“ _Lyptir_ ,” Saeric commanded. The bowtruckle let out a high-pitched squeal as his root-like feet lifted off Helga’s palm and he began to float. Helga kept her hand under him, but she gave Saeric a beaming smile.

“Very good. Now the second spell.”

“ _Flytja_ ,” the boy pronounced, a little more confidently this time. Chattering wildly in protest, Kitla did a slow somersault in the air above Helga’s hand before bobbing gently through the air and coming to rest on the nearby stump. Saeric almost landed him on his leafy head but corrected just in time with a turn of his wand.

“Excellent work, Saeric,” Helga praised. “You should say all your spells in Norse or Saxon. You have much more confidence than when you use Latin.” Saeric blushed with pride as he stepped back into line with his two fellow students. “Hnossa? You next. And since I know you already know Norse, I want to hear yours in Latin. Please float Kitla from the stump back to me.”

Hnossa stepped up much more calmly than Saeric had and pointed her wand at the bowtruckle with no hesitation. “ _Levioso_.”

Kitla had only just begun to relax after his first flight when he felt his root-tips leave the stump. He bobbed quickly up into the air like an acorn cap popping up from under water, and he gave a chattering squeal of displeasure. “ _Locomotor Kitla_ ,” Hnossa commanded, and the bowtruckle whipped quickly across the gap into Helga’s waiting hand. He clung there tightly for several seconds after he landed, refusing to let go of Helga’s middle and index fingers even when she shook her hand.

“Very good,” Helga beamed at Hnossa before turning back to the leafy creature. “Oh, come now, Kitla, it wasn’t that bad.” The bowtruckle had now wrapped all of his tendril-limbs around Helga’s hand, intertwining them with her fingers and squeezing with all of his twiggy strength. “Just once more?” she asked. The leaves on Kitla’s head quivered and bounced as he shook his head, squeaking in little staccato bursts, and Helga sighed. “All right, fine,” she acquiesced. She put the bowtruckle down onto the grass beside her satchel and shook her fingers gently to dislodge him. “Fine, go on, you little coward,” she chuckled. “There are fairy eggs for you in the satchel, have at them.”

When she stood up again Aluric was watching her expectantly, rolling his wand deftly from finger to finger. “Does that mean I automatically pass the test?” he smirked. Helga put her hands on her hips, watching Kitla submerge his head in her bag and begin gorging himself on fairy eggs, his little root-feet wiggling at the opening.

“No,” she smiled absently. “It just means we’re going to find some other small creature for you to float. Come on,” she said decisively. She reached down and poured Kitla and the rest of the fairy eggs out onto the grass, giving him a fond pat on the head as she swung the empty bag over her shoulder. “We’ll start on the walk back to the cottage, and we’ll keep an eye open for something you can demonstrate on – a squirrel, or a toad, anything like that.”

“Anything but a bear?” Aluric grinned, and all of them laughed as they walked out of the grove, leaving a bowtruckle with overflowing cheeks sitting contentedly in a pile of glimmering rainbow shards.

* * *

The sky over the village of Little Witchingham began to dim into a blue-grey as the hour moved steadily from Sext toward None, and a gusty breeze began to riffle the forest fringes behind the burying ground as the priest headed toward the chapel to ring the bell for afternoon prayer. The women of the village who sat at an array of looms outside the weaving-house now began to glance upward at the changing color overhead.

“Look like that come on ter rain,” said one of them, tucking her weft thread into a joint of the loom frame.

“Aye,” agreed her neighbor. “That do. Best take weaving inside.” She tucked her own thread into the frame and stood up, stretching tired fingers. The other women spread around the grassy sward all began to do likewise as the first mutter of thunder was heard in the distance. The oldest of the women called out to the smithy’s boy Cerdic as he walked past them down the path.

“Come here, boy. Do you help carry looms inside afore that rain.”

“Can’t,” Cerdic protested. “H’yer seen my cat? I hent seen her since morning. I’m going round a-looking for her.”

“Probably inside agin the fire box, where you ought to be,” laughed one woman. “Cat know better than you to get in out of rain.”

“She en’t,” Cerdic replied. “I look before I come here. She en’t been in village since morning.”

“Last time she run off,” said one of the younger women thoughtfully, “weren’t it at the Woodcutter’s you found her?”

“Aye,” agreed the old woman. “That girl of his feed any animal what come close to her. Cat probably go there to get her table scraps.”

Cerdic’s face was a picture of misery. “Oh, no – she’ll be et up by that dog!”

“That dog what have two tails, you mean?” chuckled one woman before disappearing inside the weaving house. Cerdic looked offended, then he stiffened up.

“Don’t you laugh, thass not funny. That dog have two tails, I’d swear it in the church!”

“Well go you and rescue the cat, then,” laughed the old woman as she tucked her weaving batten in the pocket of her apron. Cerdic made a petulant face at her that almost instantly collapsed into worry again. He looked around one more time, as if hoping to see the cat there in the village after all; then he turned sharply and began walking off down the dirt track through the eastern barley plot. “And do you hurry afore that rain!” the old woman called after him, and the rest of the weavers laughed with her as they carried their heavy looms into the safety of the dry weaving house.

* * *

Cerdic had walked off most of his ill temper by the time he got to the place where the barley field ran alongside the forest. Hunlaf the Woodcutter’s cottage was a little lump in the distance, marked mostly by smoke rising above the landscape into the moist pre-storm air in fits and tufts. If asked, Cerdic would have sworn (in the church, as he’d said before) that the smoke had a faint purple tinge to it. But of course, he wouldn’t be asked. Nobody ever saw anything odd except him, and they’d all decided long ago that he was daft and not to be taken seriously. Somewhere up ahead he could hear the faint barking of the dog that he was sure had two tails. And he thought he could hear, faintly, the raised voices of children playing a chasing game. He’d heard the Woodcutter’s daughter had collected some more orphans recently; Cerdic wondered how they managed to feed and look after them all when he could barely keep a _cat_ in the village.

“Gim?” he called tentatively. “Where are you, Gim? That’s come on to rain, and you’ll be wetted and sorry for it, you stupid cat!” He peered into the treeline of the forest, then into the barley on his other side. Sometimes she came hunting voles in the forest edges. But there was no sign of movement, cat or vole, and he supposed he’d just have to go knock on the Woodcutter’s door and ask if they’d seen her.

“ _MRREEEAAAAAAWWRRHH!_ ”

Cerdic snapped his head upward as the sound of the panicked, screeching meow was punctuated by a distant roll of thunder. “Gim??” he called. “Gim, come to master, now… where are you?” There was another howling meow, and Cerdic thought it had come from the edge of the forest.

_WHOOSH_.

A dark ginger missile came flying out of the trees, passing a few inches in front of Cerdic’s confused face. It came to a halt and hovered, wriggling, above the barley fields on the other side of the path. Cerdic gaped. Meowing hysterically and turning somersaults in the air, Gim the ginger cat floated above the growing crop, frantically trying to make eye contact with her master but unable to control the direction in which she was hovering. Cerdic thought absurdly that it looked as though the cat was swimming in a pond.

“Aluric, wait!!”

“That’s the path, Aluric, come back!”

“It went out of the trees!”

“Aluric, you twit, you’re going to get us—”

Cerdic finally tore his eyes from the floating cat in time to see three children come crashing out of the trees onto the path, followed closely by the Woodcutter’s daughter.

“…caught,” the little girl finished saying, and then they all just stared at each other in a silence broken only by the cat’s angry mewling. The tall boy in the lead had something in his hand which he quickly tucked behind his back. He was blinking rapidly as if he could disguise his shock. The shorter boy was frozen stiff, like a rabbit that has been taken by surprise and cannot remember how to run. The little girl was wide-eyed and looked mortified with fear. The Woodcutter’s daughter had one hand clapped over her mouth; with her other hand, she reached under her yellow cloak and made some sort of motion that Cerdic could not see.

“RrreeaaAAAWR!!”

Gim the cat dropped suddenly from the air, landing nimbly on all four paws in the barley. A second later, she was off like a bowshot toward the village, nothing more than a ginger streak in the distance. The humans continued to stare at each other in silence.

“H…hello, Cerdic…,” Helga said finally, trying to sound calm for the children. “Rain’s coming,” she began. “We… we should all go home and stay dry, hmm?” Subtly she touched Hnossa’s shoulder, and the girl took the hint and began tiptoeing backward along the path to the cottage. Saeric saw her and began to follow suit.

Cerdic opened his mouth to speak, lifted a hand to gesticulate – and then abruptly spun on his heels, taking off down the path after his cat. He looked over his shoulder once and nearly toppled onto his face; then he put on extra speed and was soon just a speck on the path to the village. Helga took a deep breath that shook when it came back out.

“Hurry along to the cottage, children,” she said softly. “I need to speak with my father before Cerdic has a chance to speak to the priest.”

Aluric looked up at her apologetically and then took off at a run, followed swiftly by the other two. Helga took a moment to steady herself; then she picked up her skirts and followed them as the first drops of rain began to bounce off the leaves of the hedgerow.

* * *

The weather that evening did not develop into a true storm, but a steady rain picked up just after the None bell and had continued more or less uninterrupted until nearly sunset. Now, as twilight descended, Hunlaf sat in the doorway of his cottage with his staff across his lap; he was pretending to study the intricate snake carved into the lintel of the door, but he was actually watching the path between his dooryard and the village. His sea-grey eyes scanned the waving barley and bare track for the bobbing lights of torches reflecting in rain puddles. But so far, the only movements he had seen were a few birds taking flight after the shower had ceased. Hunlaf had debated what to do when Helga had first brought the children home and shakily told him the story of Cerdic and the flying cat, while the children ate and listened in nervous silence. He had popped into the village for a few minutes on the pretense of trading a few carved pieces for some wool cloth, just to see if anyone looked at him with suspicion or fear. But the visit was uneventful, and the only odd reaction from anyone that afternoon had been a housewife who saw Hunlaf coming, elbowed her friend, and then burst into laughter. He had relaxed a little then – it seemed nobody believed Cerdic’s tales of flying cats any more than they believed him about two-tailed dogs – they had gotten lucky. But it didn’t pay to be too complacent. So, once home, he had stationed himself at the door of the cottage to watch for any sign of villagers approaching with torches and priests and good strong rope.

“I’m sorry,” came Helga’s voice from the cottage behind him. It was the hundredth time she had said it that evening, and Hunlaf grinned wryly like he had the other ninety-nine times.

“Accidents of wizarding life,” he grunted. “Can’t be helped. Any time you’re teaching children, you’re going to have mishaps with magic. _You_ came near to lighting a church on fire once when you were a baby and we lived in Norwic. Floating the altar candles, as I recall. That’s why we moved out here to the country.” Hunlaf chuckled at the memory; behind him, Helga attempted a weak smile.

“I suppose if they were going to come throw me in the river, they would have done by now?”

“Mmm,” Hunlaf agreed. “It’s a half hour’s walk to the nearest water deep enough to drown you in. They’d have wanted to do that in daylight. The better to watch you splash. Lost their light now, haven’t they?”

“But you’re still going to keep sitting in the doorway for the rest of the night, aren’t you?”

“Pays to be watchful,” was all Hunlaf said in reply. After another minute or so of quiet, Hunlaf chuckled to himself. “I suppose we just have to thank the gods it was Cerdic that saw you and not someone a little more respectable.”

“He looked as if he didn’t know whether to be frightened, or pleased that he was right,” Helga laughed softly, feeling a little of the day’s tension falling away from her shoulders as her father muffled a guffaw in his beard.

“What in Loki’s name were you doing levitating his cat, anyway?” Hunlaf grinned, now having to work to stifle his laughter so as not to wake the children curled up in the back corner of the cottage on a pile of heather-sacks. Helga pressed a hand against her cheek to hold back her own laughter.

“Bowtruckle mutiny,” she managed to say seriously, and then the giggles came washing over her, turning her legs to jelly after all the stressful waiting. She sat down hard on a stool and leaned against the cottage wall with her hands over her face, her stomach jerking in silent laughter. Hunlaf snorted through his copper mustache.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he said with mock pique, but he couldn’t hide his grin. They laughed together and then fell back into a comfortable silence, listening to the leftover rain dripping from the roof thatch into little puddles at the corners of the cottage. After a few minutes, Helga sighed.

“It was too close, though.” She pulled out her wand and began to turn it over in her hands, tracing the runes with her fingertips as she thought about what she was saying. “We can’t keep taking the risk.”

“Can’t you?” Hunlaf asked, one bushy eyebrow raised. “It’s a risk just _being_ a witch or wizard. What do you propose to do, stop teaching them?”

“No,” Helga replied immediately. “But I don’t know if I can keep teaching them here. Not so close to an _úgaldr_ village.”

“Ah,” said Hunlaf sagely. “Going to pack up and take them to an island in the middle of the sea, are you? Go off and leave your poor old father to care for himself in his old age?”

“My poor old father who can apparate to see me any time he wants,” Helga smirked. “Not an island. I don’t want them to be cut off from the world. But….” The young woman leaned her head back against the cottage wall and closed her eyes, considering carefully before answering. “Somewhere a good day’s walk away from settlements. Out on the moors somewhere, or deep in a forest. Somewhere they can’t have accidents like today.”

“Aye,” Hunlaf nodded. “And where would you live, in your forest or on your moor? Would you build yourself a cottage?”

“I’d like to have something bigger than a cottage,” Helga said dreamily. “Perhaps an old settlement or a ruined fort from the Roman times. I could use magic to repair it, and each child could have their own little room, and—”

“And let me guess,” Hunlaf stopped her. He knew the tone of her voice. “With a place like that, you could collect a few more orphaned witches and wizards? Start your own little heretic cathedral school?”

“Well, there are bound to be more orphaned magical children in England,” Helga answered. She was sitting up straight now, as if her ideas were occurring to her in a new light. “You know there must be. All over the kingdom, and not all of them have access to a friendly local witch who takes in orphans.”

“Aye, that there are,” said Hunlaf. “Heard of a few myself when I was in Norwic. There are even a couple of them living in the king’s retinue, if Crickomer is to be believed.”

“And who will teach them?” Helga got up and squeezed around her father’s bulk to stand in front of him in the misty dooryard. “Who will teach all of them? I could – if I had a safe place to take them and perhaps another pair of adult hands to help.”

“A school for magic….,” Hunlaf murmured. He was trying to sound severe and disapproving, but it was beginning to dawn on him that it might actually be possible. His daughter was standing in front of him with her fists on her hips, wand sticking out at an angle from her right hand, and the moon was rising full and white behind her head, making her look more like a _valkyrja_ than ever. He cleared his throat. “You really think you could?”

“If the churchmen at Tetford can do it,” Helga replied confidently, “then why couldn’t I? What do they have that I don’t?”

“Money,” Hunlaf chortled. “Endowments of money and land from the crown. People working that land to produce food and goods for the children’s upkeep. If you got yourself a place, that’s what you’d need – if you wanted to have a whole school full of children, that is. And that kind of endowment only comes from the king.”

Helga plopped down on the upturned basket in the dooryard and thrust her chin into her hands dejectedly. “Too bad we don’t have our own wizarding king,” she said glumly. “Or at least, a wizard who had the ear of the _úgaldr_ king. Someone who could make petitions and get that kind of money.” With a great sigh, she pointed her wand at the soil beside her shoes and began turning it in circles. Lines etched themselves in the dirt in a scrolling, helical pattern that followed her movements. Hunlaf watched her, his diaphragm tightening in a wave of nostalgia as he remembered her mother doing that exact thing whenever she felt down. He stroked his russet beard pensively, choosing his words carefully.

“ _We_ don’t,” he agreed. “But the Saxon wizards do.”

“What?” The lines stopped abruptly as Helga looked up at him, intrigued. Hunlaf nodded.

“The Saxon wizards are … _somewhat_ … organized. During the time of their king Alfred a hundred years ago, they decided that since he was getting the _úgaldr_ affairs in order, perhaps they should as well. They have a council that meets… oh, once or twice a year, whenever the mood takes them. The _gemót_ , I believe it’s called. And one of the most important things they did back then was deciding that there should always be a wizard at the right hand of the _úgaldr_ king. You know, like Myrlin was with Arthur. They chose the thegn of Salisberie, and the job has gone to that family ever since.”

“Does the _úgaldr_ king know about him? That he’s a wizard, I mean.”

“No, that’s always been very important to them,” Hunlaf explained. “To the king, he’s just one more thegn or eorl bouncing about the court. They only tell the king about the magic if there’s some sort of crisis happening in our world that might affect the _úgaldr_ too. Doesn’t happen often. But if a wizard needs something from the king, it’s the thegn of Salisberie he goes through.”

“Who is he? Do you know him?”

“Aye,” Hunlaf grunted, and Helga sat up straighter. “Name’s Goderic. Goderic de Grifondour. I met him once when the king visited Norwic. Pleasant lad. Had just taken up the position from his grandfather.”

“ _De Grifondour_?” Helga asked, narrowing her eyes. “Isn’t that a Norman name? I thought you said he was a Saxon of Salisberie.”

Hunlaf nodded, twirling his fingers in his beard. “Aye, he is. Through his mother. Her father had the job, but he had no sons. She married a Norman wizard who came over from Richart’s court. So the lad’s name may be Norman, but he’s of the bloodline of the Salisberie wizards.” Hunlaf paused for a moment, pulling a tangle out of his beard. He eyed his daughter seriously. “If this is something you truly want to do, daughter of mine… then it’s de Grifondour you need to speak to. If there’s any endowment to be had, he would be the only way to get it.”

Helga came up off the basket with a bounce, not even noticing that the wet wicker had left a damp pattern on her skirt.

“How do I find him? In Salisberie? Or would he be with the king?” She bit her lower lip as her father pondered the question.

“I suspect, this time of year, he’d be at his country house in King’s Worthy. I heard it said he goes home before the start of summer – crowded towns are no place to be in the heat, and he’s got a young brother and a farm to look after.”

“Where’s King’s Worthy?”

“About a day’s ride out of Salisberie, close to Wincestre. If you leave at sunrise you can be there before supper.” He was looking past her, ostensibly still watching the road from the village, but Helga saw the corner of her father’s mouth twitch in the beginning of a grin. She crossed her arms.

“You’re not going to tell me it’s a fool’s errand and try to stop me?”

“Hnh,” Hunlaf grunted. “Try and stop you, your mother’s daughter, from doing anything? Woden himself couldn’t stop you, so I’m certainly not going to chance it.”

Helga took her father’s head in both her hands and kissed the mop of dark red hair loudly. “Thank you!” she beamed. Hunlaf glared teasingly at her from under bushy eyebrows.

“Didn’t do anything but tell you the next step in a journey that’ll probably come to naught, but—”

“But you’ve never let your own misgivings temper my adventures,” Helga finished for him. Hunlaf shooed her toward the cottage door, smiling in spite of himself.

“Go on, then. Travelling is tiresome work, you need plenty of sleep tonight.”

Helga caught his shooing hand and squeezed it meaningfully before slipping into the darkness of the cottage. Inside was utterly silent save for the snuffling, sleepy breathing of Sœtr the crup, who was curled up on the heather-sacks amid the pile of sleeping children. Helga walked over to them and touched each little forehead lightly, brushing back the downy hair and watching their small chests rise and fall. All three of them had fallen asleep with their wands clenched tightly in their fists, and Helga saw that Hnossa had wrapped herself around her tiny brother like a shield wall. They were so afraid, she realized, that they had gone to bed prepared for an attack.

“No more,” Helga whispered in the darkness of the cottage. “No more nights like this. Not if I can help it.” Walking with new purpose, she crossed the room to her sleeping platform in the corner, draped her cloak over herself, and willed herself to sleep.

* * *

The next morning dawned with all the wild glory of a late spring sunrise, shooting the sky full of purple and gold streaks that matched the carpets of harebells and cowslips covering the meadows. The sun’s disc was not fully above the horizon when Hunlaf, Helga, and the children arrived at the oak tree beyond the fields. Hunlaf adjusted the buckle on a satchel’s strap before draping it over his daughter’s shoulder and patting her gently.

“Alright, then. There’s some food for today – handy things you can eat while riding. Now. You’re going to apparate yourself to the great Stone Circle – you’ve been there before, so you remember how it looked, yes?”

Helga nodded. “Like yesterday.” She turned to the children, taking the opportunity to teach them at least one thing before she left for the day. “When you apparate, you can only appear in a place if you can see it in your mind. So if you’ve never been to a place, or seen a drawing of it, or at least heard it clearly described, then you might get lost along the way. It’s always best to apparate somewhere you’re familiar with, and then travel from there to a new place.”

“Can’t I come with you?” Hnossa asked for the third time that morning. Helga smiled at her and bent down to embrace her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Hnossa. I’d love to take you travelling. Perhaps someday we’ll do that, you and I. But today I’m going somewhere that I don’t know is safe for you or not; and I’m not sure of my arrangements for accommodation. I wouldn’t want to bring you along on a journey that might be rough or unpleasant. Wait for the next adventure, hmm?”

“Alright…,” Hnossa acquiesced, and Helga kissed her forehead. She laid her hands on each of the boys’ heads softly and smiled at them all.

“Keep close to the cottage and my father while I’m away. I hope I won’t be gone more than a few days.” When all the children had nodded in answer, she turned back to her father. “From the Circle, what then?”

“Walk east from the Stone Circle about an hour, until you reach the river,” said Hunlaf. “Follow the river south a bit and you’ll come into the village of Ambesberie. You’re looking for a man named Ælfric the smithy. He’s a wizard. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll give you a horse to ride, so long as you promise to bring it back to him in one piece. From there it’s a day’s good riding on the easterly road to King’s Worthy. You can eat on the way. De Grifondour shouldn’t be hard to find once you’re there; I think he has the largest landholding in the town.”

“Let’s hope that’s a sign of his standing with the king,” Helga said, taking a deep breath. “Wish me good luck?”

Hunlaf took his daughter’s face in his hands and pulled her close until their foreheads touched. “Wisdom of Woden, thews of Thunor, laughter of Loki, and Hlín go before. Safely go and safely return.” He kissed her between the eyebrows and then stepped back to give her room. “Good luck, daughter.”

“Keep well. Back soon, I hope,” Helga smiled. She closed her eyes, wishing her father had pronounced Loki’s silver tongue over her as well as laughter; then she disappeared with a _pop!_ Hunlaf and the children stood looking at the place where she had been for a few quiet seconds; then Hunlaf jumped as he felt a tug on the end of his tunic.

“What is it, Harald?” he said, looking down at the small, silent boy pulling on his clothes. Harald tugged the tunic again and then pointed at his little stomach. Hunlaf chuckled. “Ah, I see. Breakfast. I suppose you must be fed, regardless of us adults and our quests and adventures, eh?” Behind them, Aluric’s stomach rumbled mightily in consensus.

“I am a little hungry,” Saeric said timidly. Hunlaf picked up little Harald and laughed, turning to head back to the cottage.

“Well come along, then. We’ll see what sort of food we can make without my daughter here to be sure it’s edible.” Chuckling, he led the children back across the meadow just as the sun let go of the horizon and began to turn the wildflower carpet into undulating gold.


	4. King's Worthy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helga's song at the start of this chapter is sourced from the Hávamál section of the Poetic Edda, stanzas 146-163. I did not quote from a published translation, but rather used the literal meaning of the words to compose my own version that I feel remains true to the spirit of the original Charm Song while giving it rhyme and meter in modern English. You can find the Poetic Edda on any number of websites, if you'd like to read the original in its entirety.

The road leading into King’s Worthy from the west became a tunnel of lush vegetation about two miles before it reached the town. Tall thickets of overhanging trees heavy with late spring foliage bent toward each other and met gently over the dirt track like lovers leaning in for chaste kisses. Late afternoon sun shone lambent and golden, coming down the path like a traveler in a straight course that lit up the alley of trees as if it had been aimed that way, and giving the whole stretch of road the look of a deep well lined with mossy green rocks and filled not with water, but with mead made from the brightest honey. The only sound to be heard under the gently swaying canopy of leaves was the soft plod of a single horse’s hooves coming down the track at a calm and leisurely gait.

Helga Hunlafsdottir rode through the quiet green and golden glow, the sun at her back lighting up her oxlip yellow cloak and setting white fire to her hair. She was floating in a happy sort of trance brought on by the rhythmic rise and fall of the horse beneath her and the idyllic landscape through which she rode. The journey had gone just as her father had instructed, and she’d had no difficulties along the way – just a very pleasant walk in the cool of the early morning, bread and cheese from the smithy’s wife to break her fast, and now a long, quiet ride on a gentle mount and a road that was nearing its conclusion. Ælfric the smithy had been pleased to meet the daughter of his old acquaintance, and had lent her a beautiful palomino palfrey which he must have bred himself; a smithy could hardly have afforded to _buy_ a palfrey, and in any case, Helga had a suspicion that this horse might have been sired by an Abraxan flying horse from Aquitaine. Its coat was too golden, and there was a bold flash in its eyes that one hardly saw in an ordinary horse.

“You’re _not_ an ordinary horse, are you, my darling?” Helga said sweetly, patting the horse on its glimmering wheat-colored mane. The horse snorted and shook its head softly, and Helga laughed. “No, of course not.” She sighed contentedly and leaned back, only faintly aware of the stiffness in her back and hips after a full day of riding. All days should be like this in some measure, she thought. The weather was fine, her stomach was full of the little strawberry cakes her father had packed for her, and she had almost reached her destination. Unbidden, a song came to her lips and she began to sing.  
  


“The charms are many that I know,

Unsung by sons of man;

More power even than a queen

Could have at her command.

The first one is a helping charm

That full of succour be;

In sorrow, pain, or any fault

True aid it renders thee!”

It was an old Norse teaching poem, a memory aid for young witches and wizards learning a basic series of charms – the protective shield, a cure for poison, the revealing charm. Each was described in a verse, and the song was often used as a guide by parents testing their children on these spells before moving them on to more advanced magic. There were eighteen charms in all, and so by the time Helga came to the ending, she could see the tunnel of trees opening into the fringes of the village ahead.

“The sixteenth charm may win the heart

Of maid or young man fair;

The seventeenth makes love wax long

And long shall keep them there.

The eighteenth charm I ne’er shall tell,

Though beast or man may try,

Save to the one I best shall know

And in whose arms shall lie!”

Her voice rang out the final notes as warm and sweet as the honeysuckle scent that infused the air around her, and she beamed with the sheer joy of being hale and young and contented with food and travel. Beneath her, the horse whinnied as if commenting on her song, and she laughed musically. “I’m sorry, was it such a very long song?” she asked, and received a snort in reply. “Well, then I’ll try for a series of shorter songs on the way back, how’s that?” The horse gave no answer, which Helga took as acquiescence.

The tunnel of foliage tapered away as the road turned round a bend, and Helga found herself now riding past open fields of crops on one side and a pasture of sheep on the other. One of the shepherd’s boys in the field looked up at her, his mouth agape, and remained so until his companion knocked him about the shins with a staff to return his attention to their task. Before long Helga arrived in the village proper. A squat little grey-stone church sat off in a churchyard to her right, with moss growing on its warm brown roof tiles, and a score of houses and small buildings stood gathered in clusters that radiated out from it. There was a market in the open space opposite the churchyard, and it was there that Helga directed her horse. She spoke to some villagers as they packed up their wares for the evening, and they told her that the king’s man de Grifondour lived at the eastern edge of the village, past the watermill on the banks of the Icen. She thanked them and rode onward through the town, following a low stone wall that ran parallel to the narrow track until the trees began to thicken around her again. The scattered houses became fewer and set further apart until she saw no more of them at all. Eventually the ground began to trend downward, and Helga thought she could hear the river gurgling placidly somewhere off to her right behind the trees. She passed an offshoot of the road leading down toward the sound of the water, and nodded kindly to the man who was walking up the track toward her carrying a sack of flour. That must be the way to the mill, she reasoned, and that meant she was close. Helga sat up straighter on the horse’s back and prepared herself to meet the wizarding Thegn of Salisberie somewhere around the next bend.

She heard her destination before she saw it. As Helga led the palfrey through the shade of a pear tree in full white blossom, a scattering of sounds began to drift toward her on the warm breeze – the metallic _tink! tink!_ of a horse being shod, the rougher sound of blunted weapons at practice, voices with the local accent raised in amiable conversation, and – quite unexpectedly – the laughter of children. It made her smile without even realizing it, and she began to nudge the horse forward with her knees. The palfrey went imperceptibly faster; this was not a horse for hurrying, and it let her know with a snort. Then the trees Helga had been riding through opened abruptly, and she got her first look at the de Grifondour estate.

To the left of the road waved an expansive field of crops that ran all the way up to the foot of a low ancient burial mound. A wide grassy sward opened up on the right side of the path and was clear all the way down to the river, which she could see glittering behind a series of buildings. In the distance the property was ringed by trees, some of which had the regimented look of an orchard. Closer to her was a long row of small structures built of wood and wattle, all bustling with activity like the pockets in a honeycomb – stables, storehouses, a woodshop, a smith, all the types of work that must go on to keep up the running of a great person’s household. Men and women went about their tasks briskly but smilingly, none seeming discontented with their lot. Rising above this row of outbuildings was the bulk of a round stone tower, a rare thing in these parts, and behind it Helga could make out the square and sturdy outline of a rectangular hall. Oddly enough, the hall was made of stone as well; Helga looked closer at the corners where wall met roof and realized that it must have once been an old Roman building, repurposed to fit de Grifondour’s fancy.

All of a sudden, Helga realized she was not quite sure exactly how to proceed now that she was here. Nobody going about their work seemed to have noticed her on the road, and she did not see anyone among them who looked like they were the master of the house. After watching for a moment, she decided to simply ride toward the tower since it was in the center of the property, and perhaps a stable boy or some other person would stop her and inquire as to what she needed there. Patting the horse gently on the neck, she walked it softly onto the grass and directed it toward the imposing stone structure.

The first thing she saw as she came around the tower’s circumference was the origin of the sounds that had first made her smile on her approach. Three boys were cavorting madly around the wide green yard of the hall, each of them carrying a blunted practice sword and rough facsimile shield. One was clearly older than the other two and was teaching them maneuvers that he had already mastered; he was tall, probably taller than his true age, with hair the color of toasted barley and a face sprinkled with the irregular sprouts of what would soon be his first beard. The second boy was pale and lean, verging on scrawny, and his finely angled brows and cheekbones were framed by a thick fall of black silken curls. He stood straight and held his shoulders in the way Helga had come to recognize from Aluric, and she knew that this boy must be of noble stock. The third boy was a Moor. Helga was taken aback - having lived her whole life in the tiny environs of Witchingham and nearby Norwic, she had never seen an African person before; but she had once seen a picture of St. Maurice in a priest’s book, and this boy was like that picture – dark brown skin and hair thick as moss that stood out wildly from his head like a saint’s halo. Helga grinned widely. Watching children at play always brought her great joy, and the three boys were wholly enveloped in their pretend battle and seemed to be having the time of their lives. She could see immediately that the Moorish boy was the better swordsman – he moved without hesitation or time wasted calculating steps – but she could also see that he held back when engaging the lean, pale boy, as though he didn’t want to hurt the boy’s pride by beating him. The older boy was certainly talented and well trained, but there was something sanctimonious in the way he explained techniques to the other two that Helga didn’t quite like.

She had been watching them for several minutes, almost forgetting why she had come, when the pale boy spun around to counter a blow and saw her.

“Eaderic, look! Ow!” He had put down his shield in surprise, and just as he spoke, the Moorish boy’s sword had slammed into his upper arm.

“Sorry,” his attacker said sheepishly, and all three boys lowered their practice weapons and stared at her. Helga recovered herself and remembered her errand.

“Hello,” she began tentatively. “I am here to speak to Goderic de Grifondour. Is he here today?” She was very aware of her Danish accent when she spoke the Saxon language, and it made her nervous for the first time. The older boy put down his weapons and stepped forward, changing his whole posture to make himself look more like an adult.

“Good day to you, lady,” he said ceremoniously. “I am Eaderic de Grifondour. Goderic de Grifondour is my elder brother. He is at present speaking with our master of horse, as we have had a foal born this morning. If it please you, I can take you to see him, and meanwhile your own horse can be stabled, fed, and watered.” Helga’s palfrey looked up from chomping on de Grifondour’s thick grass and whinnied as if he understood and supported this statement. Helga smiled.

“Yes, of course, thank you. We’ve come from Ambesberie, and I’m sure he could use a good rubbing and a cool drink.” She patted the horse affectionately, and he snorted. Eaderic approached to help her down, but before he could get to her, Helga had swung her leg over and dismounted in a flourish of skirt and cloak. The boy’s eyebrow rose a fraction in appreciation, and then he turned toward the row of outbuildings.

“Boy!” he called indiscriminately to a group of youths gathered near the blacksmith’s fire. One of the boys detached himself and came closer, and Eaderic nodded toward the palfrey. “Take this lady’s horse and see that it gets fed and watered, and has a good brushing. And check its shoes, it’s had a long walk.” The servant nodded and began leading the palfrey away. Eaderic turned back to Helga and offered his arm. “May I escort you, lady?”

Helga restrained herself from grinning at this boy, who couldn’t be older than thirteen, behaving like a man grown. She certainly didn’t want to cut him down by giggling. “Yes, thank you. I should be happy to walk with such a gracious young man.” She laid her hand on his outstretched arm.

“Keep practicing, you two,” Eaderic said to the other boys. “I’ll be back shortly, and I’ll teach you the next technique.”

Helga saw the other two boys give each other the same unimpressed look as soon as Eaderic’s back was turned.

“You are a Dane?” Eaderic said to her matter-of-factly as they began walking down the row of buildings, and she nodded.

“From a village near Norwic,” she elaborated. Eaderic tilted his head back knowingly.

“Ah,” he concurred. “My brother visited Norwic when I was a boy – I plan to go with him the next time he travels there.”

Helga again had to press her lips together to hold back a giggle. He said _when I was a boy_ as though he were not _still_ a boy. She looked at him closely; he had fierce ice-blue eyes ringed with thick, dark lashes, strong brows, and the arm she was holding was already well-muscled for a boy whose voice had only just finished deepening. _Bless him,_ Helga thought. _He so wants to be like his brother that he can’t wait to finish being a child._ Well, she could make him feel like a grown person if that’s what would make him happy.

They were heading now for a stable building that was set apart from the other barns and shops, and Helga could hear the snorting of a horse and the conversing of voices from within. She turned and smiled at Eaderic. “Do you have many foals each year?” she asked conversationally. Eaderic nodded.

“There’s nothing my brother loves so much, besides swords, as horses. We pride ourselves on breeding only the finest. We even brought in a destrier from Normandy last season to sire some of our stock. That was a fine palfrey _you_ rode,” he added. “Do you know his breeding?”

“No,” Helga admitted. “He was lent me by a friend in Ambesberie. But he is a very special horse, I agree.”

Eaderic stopped. “Is this _friend_ Ælfric the blacksmith, by any chance?” He was looking at her entirely differently now, one thick eyebrow peaked, and Helga smiled at him roguishly.

“He certainly is. An old acquaintance of my father.”

“I see,” Eaderic grinned, and he adjusted his cloak just enough to reveal the wand that was thrust into his belt. Helga did likewise, and when he saw her wand in her girdle, she felt his arm relax suddenly beneath her hand. “So you are not come to see my brother on a… _mundane_ matter, then?”

“No, indeed,” she replied, and they began walking again. “I have business of a very particular nature which might require him to speak with the king on my behalf.”

“Well, you came on a good day,” Eaderic smiled. “When a mare has foaled successfully, he’s in a generous mood for a week. Here we are,” he finished, nodding toward the separated stable. He pushed open the door and led her just over the threshold. “Brother?” he called out, and Helga took a good look at her surroundings.

The stable had only a few stalls and a large, open central area piled with straw. Helga thought it must be a designated birthing stable. At the far end, a middle-aged man in servant’s garb leaned against a stall door cleaning a brush. He was speaking with a blond man in a fine red cloak who was crouched in front of him, nose to nose with a little chestnut foal. The baby horse appeared bright and energetic, and the man was laughing happily as he ruffled the animal’s little mane. In the stall behind him stood a beautiful blood bay mare, and she was snuffling impatiently and nudging his head with her nose, clearly wanting her foal to be put back in with her.

“Alright, Gwen,” Helga heard the man say with a chuckle. “Alright, I’m just examining your fine work, calm down.” He stood and patted the mare’s face kindly, and she shook her head to let him know she would not be seduced by his sweet words. “You can put him back in with her now, Eafa,” he said to the other man, who nodded and put down the brush.

“Brother?” Eaderic tried again, and this time the man’s head turned to look at them. “You have a visitor, brother,” Eaderic announced, and then added, “a _lady_.” At that word, the man quickly wiped his hands on a cloth that lay nearby and came across the stable to greet them.

Goderic de Grifondour was tall, broad of shoulder and chest, and was the very image of his younger brother in adult form. Helga thought he was perhaps five or six years her senior. His golden-barley hair hung loose to his shoulders, with a section pulled back from his eyes and tied at the back of his head, and his beard was thick and full but was neatly cropped close to his chin. His eyes were a deeper blue than those of his younger brother, but just as fierce. The red cloak he wore was finer than any cloth Helga had ever owned, and she had to resist the urge to touch it, just to see what it felt like on her fingertips.

“Lady,” he said to Helga with a half bow, and his voice was deep and resonant. “I am honored simply to see your beautiful face adorning my home.”

“She’s come from the Danelaw with business for the _thegn of Salisberie_ ,” Eaderic said meaningfully behind her, and Helga let him see the wand tucked in her girdle before letting her cloak fall back over it. Goderic nodded.

“Thank you, brother. Would you go and tell the boys to wash before supper? Table will be laid soon.” Eaderic gave Helga a courtly bow and retreated back into the sunshine, walking rigidly until he thought they couldn’t see him and then breaking into a run. Goderic chuckled and took one of Helga’s hands in both of his. “Your name, lady?”

“Helga Hunlafsdottir, sir.”

“Ah, a daughter of the Norwic wandmaker,” Goderic said sagely. “I trust my brother escorted you with all due courtesy?”

“He was well taught,” Helga smiled. “That is a beautiful horse,” she added, looking behind him at the now contented mare. Goderic swelled with pride.

“Isn’t she? That’s Gwynever, dam to three of the best destriers I’ve ever bred, and I’m hoping that little one in there will be the fourth. His sire was an Abraxan half-breed – all the courage and power, but without the wings.” He offered Helga his arm and led her outside. “You know Ælfric of Ambesberie, of course?” he grinned.

“He lent me the palfrey I came here on,” she nodded, and they began walking toward the large rectangular hall. “I _did_ think he had the look of an Abraxan too, but I didn’t want to ask because there were non-magical ears listening. And by the way, are all of your servants witches and wizards, or do you employ _úgaldr_ as well?”

“Only a few magic, the master of horse back there included,” replied Goderic, “but most of the _mundani_ servants are aware of us, and they’ve served this family long enough to know how to keep secrets. None of them want us found out because then they’d have to find work at some other thegn’s house, and they like working for me too much because I’m soft.” He grinned sheepishly at her. “But you didn’t ride all day from Ambesberie just to talk with me about horses and servants, did you?”

“No,” Helga admitted. “I have… an _idea_ that I would like to see brought to reality,” she said carefully. “But I will need support from the king. And my father said you were the man who could make that happen.”

Goderic smiled and paused at the door of the hall. “I am the man who will certainly try.”

* * *

Table was laid that evening as the golden light Helga had ridden through began simmering down into the soft pink and purple of a field of catchfly blossoms. A few clouds of deeper blue rolled in from the west, bringing with them a soft, steady rain that pattered rhythmically against the thatch and stone walls. The rectangular hall was bathed in the dim amber light from the central hearth, in which burned a pleasant fire that had been charmed to give out good light with almost no smoke. The few tendrils that did escape floated upward into the vaulted ceiling and disappeared among the rafters; the windows had been shuttered against the rain, but Helga could see triangles of purple sky at each end of the roof where smoke from a non-magical fire would be drawn out. She sat beside Goderic at a handsomely carved table at the far end of the hall, while the children sat at another table on the opposite side of the firebox being entertained by Eafa, the wizard master of horse. Beneath one of the shuttered windows, a young man sat on a stool and strummed a lyre, occasionally singing snatches of ballads between bites of rough bread. Goderic had served his guest mead in his best golden cups, and Helga was staggered by the choice of not one or two but three ( _three??_ ) meats he placed before her. While Goderic spoke at length about Norwic, and meeting her father, and wandcraft, and horse breeding, she munched on bread and honey and tried to decide if she was supposed to eat the veal, the peafowl, or the venison first. If there was a rule about such things, she didn’t know it.

“So,” Goderic said finally when the food had been reduced to bones and crusts. He leaned back in his chair and pointed a handsome rowan-wood wand at the mead, directing it to refill Helga’s cup. “Now that we have eaten and are comfortable, why don’t you tell me what you came all the way across England to ask of me?”

Helga took the cup and sipped, staring through the mellowing fire at the children across the room. Eafa was animatedly telling a story, and all three boys were leaned forward and laughing. After a few moments gathering her thoughts, she put the cup down and turned to face her host.

“I want to form a school.”

Goderic regarded her for a minute in puzzled silence. “You mean like a cathedral school? For what children? No Saxon churchman will allow a woman teacher, not at any church I’ve been to. Maybe among your people—”

“No, not in a church,” Helga shook her head. “And not like a cathedral school. I want to make a school for orphaned witches and wizards. Magical children who have no parents to help them develop their magic.” Goderic tilted his head back, his eyes narrowing as he worked out what she was saying. Since he said nothing aloud, she went on. “There are so many more of them orphaned now, what with the fighting between your people and the Danes – my father is at home caring for three of them as we speak, and I’m sure you’ve seen your share. They can’t learn what they need on their own. And you know what happens if they smother their abilities.”

“They become Death-Shadows,” Goderic murmured, nodding softly. He looked up from his mead and gazed across the fire at the children’s table, and Helga followed his eyes to the two boys who sat with his brother.

“Who are they?” she asked. “Those boys, I mean.” Goderic put down his cup and crossed his arms.

“For now? My wards. The one who looks like he hasn’t eaten in a week is called Rodolphus,” he said, pointing to the lean, pale boy with the silken black hair. “He comes from a noble family in Duke Richard’s court in Normandy. His father came here as a diplomat to argue with King Æthelræd about the sea routes or some such nonsense, and he died here just before Candle-mass. The other one is Walrand of Brittany,” he went on, indicating the Moorish boy. “His father translates for Richard’s court, and he was made ward to Rodolphus’s father to improve his station and help him make a good marriage. They’re like brothers now. The boys came to England with Rodolphus’s father because they wanted to see another country, and now they’re stranded here because we hadn’t the slightest clue what to do with them or who to send them home to – or if they even _had_ anyone to _be_ sent to.”

“Are they both wizards?” Helga inquired, and Goderic nodded again.

“And first-rate ones, at that – or at least they will be. I offered to take them so they could be in a wizarding home, and I’ve written to the Norman court, but….” He shrugged and took another drink of mead. “It’s been nearly four months, and all I’ve received is one hearth-message from a wizard there saying Rodolphus has nobody except female cousins whose husbands want to kill him and steal his inheritance, and that there is unrest in the court, so they’d both be safer staying with me.” They both fell silent, watching the boys roughhousing over the remnants of dinner. Rodolphus had given Eaderic’s hair a clandestine poke with his wand and had turned it a queer shade of green, and he and Walrand were hard pressed not to dissolve into helpless giggles every time they looked at him. Goderic sighed and wiped his hand over his beard, and Helga saw for the first time that day that he looked tired.

“You were good to take them in,” she said softly. “Most men would find themselves ill-equipped for the task, and you have no nursemaid or wife to help you.”

“Are you applying for the position?” Goderic asked with a roguish grin. “Because I could do worse, even if you are a Dane.” He flicked his eyes over her thick golden braid and milk-white skin, and Helga stared at him in disbelief until she realized that he was at least half-joking. She sighed and gave him a wry smile.

“Oh, I have enough children to take care of at the moment, thank you, without marrying and having thirteen of my own.”

“Wouldn’t have to be thirteen” Goderic said nonchalantly as he finished off his mead cup. “We could keep it to a round seven. Good magical number.” He managed to keep a straight face for about five seconds before the laughter forced its way out of him with a snort. Helga couldn’t help herself and began to laugh with him.

“Between us we’ve already got that many, if we count Eaderic and my little witch’s younger brother!”

“Oh, Jesu, don’t tell Eaderic you’re counting him as a child,” Goderic chuckled. “He’d die of embarrassment.” When they had finally laughed themselves back into a contented silence again, Goderic took a deep breath and put down his empty cup. This time he didn’t refill it. “What would you teach them at your school?” he asked her, and for the first time she saw the look of the serious businessman come over his face. She put her cup down as well and turned slightly toward him in her chair.

“Well… I would make sure they all had the basic spells, for one,” she began. She hadn’t really planned it in detail yet, but now that she was explaining it she found the ideas coming to her to be practical and solid. “Everyday things, like moving objects, basic defense, repairing and preparing charms. I would teach them to travel with magic, to send hearth-messages, and to make basic potions. A few basic forms of divination. How to create their own spells. And I’d teach them about magical plants and animals. You know, the things parents would teach if they had them.”

“And what about more advanced subjects? For instance, if a student had a gift for healing magic? Or for scrying?”

“Well, then once a student had mastered all of my basics, I would try to find someone to place them with who could help them with the subject they were best at. Like an apprenticeship.”

Goderic nodded, pursing his lips behind his barley-colored mustache. “And would you teach them to read?”

This was something Helga hadn’t thought about, and it made her pause. After a slight hesitation, she said, “I can teach runes. Norse, and a good deal of Saxon. I can’t read Latin,” she admitted, and Goderic leaned forward.

“But _they_ will need to,” he said matter-of-factly. “Latin is the one language spoken among all the wizards in what was once the Roman world. I don’t speak Norse, and you don’t speak Welsh, and neither of us knows a word of Greek; but I can go to any country in Christendom and speak Latin, and I will be understood. And if the children want to learn from ancient magical texts, they will need to be lettered in Latin for that as well.”

Helga picked up the empty mead cup and turned it in her hands, tracing the outline of the lion etched into its polished side. Words engraved around the rim read AVDACIA – FORTITVDO – DIGNITAS. They were very pretty, and they meant nothing to her because she could not read them. She squared her shoulders and looked up at Goderic with a smile.

“Well, then I suppose I’ll have to have a fellow teacher who can handle Latin, won’t I?”

Goderic leaned back in his seat, chuckling. “You are undaunted,” he said. “That is what I have always heard about your race, and I see that it’s accurate. So, then – if you have all this planned, what do you need me for?” He asked the question like he already knew but wanted to hear her tell him anyway. Helga put the cup back on the table again and laced her fingers in her lap.

“I plan to find an abandoned settlement or forgotten hill fort somewhere away from non-magical villages to protect the children. I’ll fix it up with magic, make it livable, and I’ll bring in some other witches and wizards to help me. But I can’t conjure food to keep them with, and I can’t conjure coins to buy rarer magical supplies. Cathedral schools operate on endowments from the king – I was hoping to get one for myself.”

“You want King Æthelræd to fund a school for magic?” Goderic sputtered, and she nodded before he could start extricating himself.

“He wouldn’t have to know it was for magic,” she explained. “We – and by that, I mean _you_ – could tell him that we plan to take in many orphans as our wards, and the money would be for their upkeep and education. That would be entirely true.”

“Yes, but there are churchmen who do exactly that. He would ask why the kingdom needs yet another home for orphans, and this one not attached to a church.”

“We could tell him that there are things we would teach that the church cannot,” Helga replied, and Goderic scoffed.

“Like what? And ‘witchcraft’ is not the correct answer.”

“Well…,” Helga paused. She glanced over at Rodolphus, his black hair looking shiny and wet in the firelight, and thought of how he reminded her of Aluric. “Oh!” she exclaimed then, and Goderic raised an eyebrow. “We could tell the king that these orphans are high-born and have nobody to take them as wards in the traditional way, and that we would teach them how to be ladies and thegns of quality, how to run households and behave at court – all things the church does not teach.”

“It wouldn’t be a total lie,” Goderic admitted. “Rodolphus is noble-born.”

“Yes!” Helga grinned, the idea beginning to grow legs. “And I have a boy at home who was son of an eorl! And you could use Rodolphus as an example to the king, because the king knows him. He can’t go home to what little family he has, because they want his inheritance and he would be in danger! So he should be educated here, in safety, until he is of age.”

“The king did rather like Rodolphus,” Goderic pondered, scratching at his beard. “Alright,” he said finally. “Let me think on it tonight. I’ll speak with Eafa after the children are abed, and we’ll look at it from all angles. I make no promises, but if I think it can be presented to the king with any chance of success and with low risk, I’ll let you know in the morning.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Helga smiled accommodatingly, trying not to press dents into her palms with her fingernails. She doubted she would be able to unclench her fists until she had her answer.

That night Helga was shown to a bed tucked into one of the corners of the hall’s loft and helped out of her cloak by an elderly witch who smelled of cooking fires and bread. The triangular smoke hole just above her cast a puddle of moonlight onto Helga’s feet as she climbed in and felt the heather mattress settle around her. This was certainly Goderic’s own bed; a wooden chest which doubtless contained the family’s valuables was locked up near her head, and the wood and iron frame surrounding her had been built for someone tall and broad. Across the hall, in the loft just below the other smoke hole, the three boys were sleeping peacefully on cushioned benches. Below, at the bottom of the ladder she had just come up, Helga could see Goderic and Eafa sitting on the low bench that ran around the walls of the hall. Each man’s arms were crossed, and a murmur of their quiet discussion floated up to her ears. At first, she strained to hear snatches of what they said. But after a few minutes Eafa pointed his wand at the fire in the hearth, turning it a dim, sleepy shade of red. The scent of wildflowers and night air wafted in through the smoke hole, and although Helga had feared she would be awake all night without knowing a verdict, a short while later she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

It was a full hour after sunrise when Helga awoke to find herself in an empty loft in an empty hall. The light coming in through the smoke hole was a pale but radiant yellow like a sheet of gold that had been hammered as thin as parchment. Rising up from the hall below was the scent of fresh bread and strawberries. Helga climbed down the ladder stiffly but eagerly and found the food she had smelled waiting for her on the table, along with a cup of fresh milk. Her cloak lay draped over the table beside it, looking as though someone had given it a smart tap with a cleaning charm and a gentle brushing besides. There was no sign of her host or his wards. She hoped he wasn’t out somewhere gallivanting on a horse, avoiding telling her his decision.

After she had eaten everything that had been on the table – she felt it would be rude to leave any remnants – Helga wandered out of the silent hall into the bright sunshine. The day was going to be glorious and clear, a rare thing in that rainy kingdom, and she resolved to be happy about that regardless of whatever Goderic de Grifondour had to say to her. All around her, servants walked jauntily about their business, going here and there with hands full of wood or cut grasses or wool. A little girl was coming up a path from the stream carrying a basket full of fat raspberries, and when she saw Helga, she offered her a taste with pink-stained hands. Helga grinned at her and took a couple of berries before heading down the path that the child had just come up. It led into the orchard she had glimpsed the day before, and she thought she could hear the sounds of children laughing over the gurgling of the river. Well, she thought – if Goderic wasn’t around to give her his answer, then she would bide her time with his wards until he showed himself.

The first row of trees that marked the beginning of the orchard were apples in full snowy bloom. The air around them was heady with scent, and they buzzed and quivered as hundreds of bees began their day’s work among the white flowers. Helga crept up and peeked between two of the trunks near the end of the row – and immediately had to jump back out of the way as a massive silver leopard bounded past her down the avenue of apple trees. She was so shocked that she nearly cried out – until she realized that the leopard was shimmering and translucent, not a real leopard at all but a glistening illusion. Helga gaped. It was a full-bodied _hirð_ charm, something few wizards could produce without years of practice. Goderic had not been exaggerating; if one of the children had produced this, then they were going to be fine wizards indeed. The silvery cat stopped a few trees away and turned to regard her, twitching its tail pensively, and Helga was amazed at how brightly it shone even in full sunlight. When it began to pad silently away down the lane of trees, she followed it, and found its source standing with his wand still out halfway down the row.

“Come back to me, Jadd,” Walrand was saying, holding out a hand to the translucent leopard as Rodolphus grinned at him with approbation and wonder. They had not yet noticed Helga, so intent were they on the apparition in front of them.

“You named it?” the thin boy questioned, and his friend smirked as the silver cat brought its misty forehead up into the palm of its wizard’s hand.

“ _Naturelment_ ,” Walrand replied. “The _patronus_ , he is a loyal guardian. Why should he not have a name?”

“Why not, indeed!” Helga agreed, and both boys snapped immediately to attention, adopting a courtly posture as they realized they were in the presence of a lady. Helga noticed that Rodolphus glanced twice at Walrand to assure himself he was doing it correctly. The leopard, its caster’s attention now diverted, swished its tail and wandered off into the rows of trees, fading as it went and eventually disappearing entirely.

“Forgive us, lady,” Walrand began, “but our guardian did not make you an introduction last night.” He spoke as if it were he and not Rodolphus who held authority, and Helga saw that Rodolphus made no eye contact with her at all. He instead watched his friend’s face intently, like a student working at a lesson.

“I am Helga Hunlafsdottir of Little Witchingham, in the Danelaw,” she told them. Spreading her skirts around her, she sat down on the petal-strewn grass to show them they did not have to stand on ceremony with her. “Goderic spoke of the two of you last night,” she explained as the boys relaxed a little. “I was sorry to hear of your father.” She said this directly to Rodolphus, although she did not meet his eyes for very long since he didn’t seem keen on it. The pale boy nodded and glanced again at Walrand, as if he were unsure of the proper response.

“You _thank her_ now,” Walrand whispered, and Rodolphus nodded again to himself.

“Thank you, lady,” he said to the grass. His friend chuckled and sat himself down on an upturned wooden bucket.

“This one, he is like a foreigner no matter who he speaks to, so I am his interpreter.”

“Like your father in the Duke’s court?” Helga smiled. Walrand grinned and spread his arms equivocally. Rodolphus was now staring at a mockingbird that had perched in a nearby tree, but he seemed better able to speak when he was looking at no one.

“They call me _l’estrange_. My cousins. They say I will not meet their eyes because I am a faierie child.”

“Well, are you?” Helga asked.

“No,” Rodolphus answered matter-of-factly, still staring at the mockingbird; then he seemed to realize that it was not an ordinary question, and he turned to look at her briefly, his dark brows arched high on his milky forehead. Helga laughed warmly, joined by Walrand, and after a few moments even Rodolphus himself began to laugh. He stopped abruptly, though, as soon as Walrand’s chuckles faded into a deep breath.

“You both speak excellent Saxon,” Helga said softly in the quiet that followed. “I suppose you both are lettered in many languages? Norman, Saxon, Latin?” Walrand nodded his head at all three.

“And enough Norse to get home if we are lost,” he added in Norse.

“Walrand speaks more than I,” Rodolphus said flatly, now very interested in a squirrel three trees away. His friend shrugged, but he was smiling.

“Comes with being son of an interpreter. You hear things. You hear them enough….” He poked a finger down through his thick hair and touched his temple. “They go in.”

“That name you called your _hirð_ leopard earlier—”

“Is that what Norse wizards call them?” Walrand interjected, and Rodolphus cocked his head to one side.

“ _Hirð,_ a bodyguard, a retainer, that which protects his master with his body.” Having recited this, he went back to stalking the squirrel. Walrand went on.

“Apt word,” he said. “The Latin is _patronus_.”

“You will have to teach me the Latin incantation later,” Helga smiled. “But that name you called it – Jadd? What language is that? I don’t recognize it.”

“It means _grandfather_ in the Arab tongue,” Walrand explained, and when Helga’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, he looked as though he had expected as much. “My grandsire, my father’s father in Africa, he followed Mohamet, and Arabic was my father’s native tongue. I don’t speak it very well myself, but I like to call my _patronus_ Jadd because he is my guardian, like my grandsire would be if he still lived.”

“You cast it beautifully,” Helga praised, and Walrand beamed proudly. “I have only ever seen a few wizards do it with a result like that – a fully-formed creature that responds to their voice. My father is one. His comes as a reindeer. But you must be a very talented young man, to cast one so completely and you not yet full grown.”

“He tried to teach me but I couldn’t make one,” Rodolphus said, and Helga jumped and squeaked because his voice came from directly behind her. She hadn’t seen him circle around, and she had to press her hand over her heart to stop it beating through her bodice.

“People don’t enjoy it when you speak unexpectedly from behind them,” Walrand instructed his friend as Rodolphus came over and sat in the grass beside him. The lean boy blinked placidly as he processed this information; then he nodded softly to himself. Walrand turned back to Helga.

“Can you cast one?” he asked her, beginning to twirl his wand deftly between his fingers. It was a lovely wand made of some reddish wood with a strong, dark grain. Helga tilted her head.

“You know, I’ve never tried!” she said, a little surprised at herself. “I suppose I’ve just never needed to cast one, so I just didn’t bother. I know the spell, of course. I’ve just never used it.”

“You should try it here,” Rodolphus suggested, and this time he actually looked at her for a moment before dropping his eyes back to the grass he was braiding. “That way if you fail, you’ve only failed in front of children and your pride is intact.” Helga laughed at him merrily.

“Rodolphus,” she grinned, picking herself up off the grass, “in my opinion, pride is highly overrated.” She dusted off her skirts and pulled her wand from her girdle as Walrand got off his bucket to come watch her more closely.

“Say the spell in Norse,” he encouraged. “We’ve only ever heard the Latin.”

“All right,” Helga acquiesced. Walrand crossed his arms and watched her expectantly, and even Rodolphus looked up from his grass, though he kept plaiting it without watching his fingers. Helga breathed deeply and held her wand out in front of her. She closed her eyes, remembering what her father had said about casting this particular spell – that one must go back to the happiest day of one’s life, because the _hirð_ breathed the happiness like people breathed air. Helga let herself go back to a bright spring day in the Norwic market, the feeling of sun and mild air and her father’s calloused hands securely wrapped around her tiny seven-year-old legs so she wouldn’t fall off his shoulders. It had been her first sight of a real town, and her mother’s hair had shone red-gold as she had walked ahead of them. Helga remembered watching her mother’s braids bouncing against the back of her pale blue dress and loving her with the fierceness and bright white joy that only a child can muster. She breathed in the memory like sweet air.

“ _Bíð_ _hirð!”_ she called out suddenly, and swirled her wand in a powerful circle. A jet of silver-white cloud burst out of the wand’s tip and turned on itself for a moment, like oil floating in water; then it collected itself into a round mass and, after a moment or two, took the unmistakable shape of a badger. Helga’s whole face split into a grin.

“Look at her!” she breathed. Rodolphus tossed his hair out of his eyes.

“It’s not fully formed,” he said matter-of-factly. “Blurry around the edges.” He was right, of course; Helga could see that. The silvery badger lifted its head toward her and sniffed the air with its blunt nose, but the image was wavery, and it didn’t shine as Walrand’s leopard had done.

“Rodolphus,” Walrand cringed, “do you remember what we discussed about when to be honest?” Rodolphus started to shrug, but Helga waved nonchalantly at them both.

“Oh, it’s alright, dear. It is never wrong to be honest. Unless, of course, you’re speaking to an angry man with a large sword, and then perhaps it’s best to be silent.” Helga watched her blurry badger trundle around in the grass for a few steps, growing fainter as it did. “At least I know I can do it,” she reasoned. “They get stronger and more solid with practice, right?”

Walrand nodded. “You got an animal on your first try. That is more than most.”

“I got white smoke,” Rodolphus added. They all watched the badger quietly then, until finally it ceased sniffing the air and began to waddle away down the lane of trees. As its waddle became faster and more pronounced, Helga suddenly heard the sound of hooves clopping the dirt of the orchard path. Before she had time to wonder why her badger sounded like it had hooves, a horse came round the end of the row of apple trees and trotted toward them. Its feet swept through the misty apparition of the badger until it dissipated into wisps of silver vapor. Helga sighed as it disappeared; then she turned her attention to the rider.

Goderic de Grifondour was mounted on an exquisite blood bay stallion which must have been a brother to the mare she had seen yesterday in the stable. It had a look in its eyes that said it understood itself to be no less than a king of horses, and Helga pitied the man who ever faced that horse in battle. Behind Goderic and his stallion trotted Helga’s palomino palfrey, who promptly stooped to munch on the thick orchard grass as soon as Goderic loosened his grip on its halter. Goderic grinned down at them.

“There you are,” he laughed. “Naturally, you would be with the children. Was that a ghost badger?” He pointed over his shoulder at the spot where the silver badger had vanished. Walrand beamed up at his guardian.

“Her _patronus_ ,” he supplied. “Can we keep her around for a while so she can teach us more Norse magic?”

Goderic snorted. “Be careful what you wish for,” he muttered under his breath. Aloud, he said simply, “Well? Are you ready?”

“R… ready for what?” Helga stammered. By way of reply, Goderic tugged gently on the palfrey’s lead so that it stepped out of his stallion’s shadow. Helga saw that her cloak had been draped over the leather pack behind the saddle, and that the pack looked to have been refilled. She gasped. “You mean… you’ve decided?”

Goderic nodded, chuckling at himself as he did. “I spent the morning leaving instructions for Eafa and my brother so they can take care of things here. Come on.” He tossed her the lead to her palfrey. Helga could barely contain herself.

“You mean …we’re going to Lundenburh to see the king??” She went up on her tiptoes in excitement, and Goderic sighed.

“Helga Hunlafsdottir, we are going to Lundenburh to see the king.”


	5. Gwydion Pyk

Apparating had always been Helga’s _least_ favorite activity, and this on a list that included things like pulling dead animals out of a crup’s mouth. The press of the wind against her eardrums, the sickening tightness around her chest and stomach, the swirling feeling of disorientation – give her a good healthy walk or ride any day. Apparition, she had always felt, was for people who lacked patience and, in her opinion, a sense of self-preservation. Goderic de Grifondour, however, had no such qualms. And of course, for a journey that could take several days on horseback, being able to simply appear there within seconds did have its merit.

“Where will we be apparating to?” Helga had asked him as they rode out of the orchard toward the stream. If she had to apparate with someone else pulling her, she at least wanted to know where she would be landing.

“An inn,” Goderic had replied, “just inside the walls of Lundenburh on the west side, near the Ludd Gate. The innkeep is a wizard. He keeps an empty courtyard at the back of the place specifically for wizards coming into and leaving the city so they can apparate without being seen by the _mundani_.” Helga had nodded as though “Ludd Gate” and “walls on the west side” meant anything to her at all, which they didn’t. She had never been to Lundenburh – in fact, the largest town she had ever seen was Norwic, and even that place had more street names than she cared to try and remember. She would just have to hold tight to Goderic’s arm and let him do all the apparating for both of them.

There was a clear, flat space by the stream bank that de Grifondour clearly used often for a disapparating point the way her father always used the big oak tree in the barley field, and Goderic led both their horses into the center of it and waited until both animals had stopped their nervous prancing. He moved the mounts close together, until his right leg pressed against Helga’s left, and then reached out for her arm.

“Will the horses be alright?” Helga asked anxiously. Goderic squeezed her wrist reassuringly.

“As long as we keep tight hold with our legs so they don’t try to bolt. Ready?”

“I hate apparating,” she said by way of answer, and Goderic just chuckled. The next moment, Helga felt a slap of cold, dry air against her face as the stream and the trees and Goderic disappeared into a swirling haze. She felt a little shriek squeeze out of her as the pressure around her lungs surged and then abated, and her palfrey whinnied frantically beneath her – and she could have sworn she heard Goderic laughing hysterically. Then it all stopped at once. Helga swayed on the horse as the air around her came to a dead halt and the rushing sound of wind abruptly quieted. The palfrey did a shuffling little dance of disgruntlement and snorted his disapproval. Helga’s ears felt like they had water in them, and she shook her head until the sensation subsided. Beside her, Goderic _was_ laughing.

“You _really_ don’t like that, do you? Sorry,” he grinned, clearly not at all sorry. Helga pressed a hand against her bodice until her equilibrium returned.

“I keep waiting for someone to invent a better way of getting places quickly, and they keep disappointing me,” she replied. Goderic laughed aloud and swung himself down off his stallion, who apparently was unfazed by the whole operation.

“Well, cheer up,” he said, straightening his cloak. “I heard that some wizards in Saxony have started enchanting broomsticks so you can ride them through the air. I’ll buy one and let you try it, see if you like that any better.” He held out his arms to help her down, and since she was still unsteady from the apparating, she let him.

Once her feet were back on the earth, she was actually able to give some attention to her surroundings. They had arrived in the middle of an empty square courtyard with no apparent outlet save a heavy wooden door in the crumbling wall straight ahead. The brick showing through the gapped plaster was the color of pale red sandstone, giving the building away as a leftover of the old Roman city. High on their left rose what could only be the outer wall of Lundenburh; beyond it, Helga could hear the soft splashing of the Fleta as it tumbled south to join the wide Tames somewhere behind them. Now that her heart had stopped rushing blood to her ears, she realized that the flood of sound she had been hearing hadn’t been her own pulse at all. The air here was positively _thick_ with sounds – the flow of the rivers, the honking of geese and chickens in nearby pens, the plod of numerous horses passing to and fro outside the courtyard, the stomping of many feet on a wooden bridge, and a cacophony of voices buying and selling and calling out greetings or curses. Helga supposed that she had known _academically_ that a city like Lundenburh contained a great many people; but hearing them now, all going about their business at the same time all around her, it was almost like apparating. There was a low hiss of constant noise that seemed to go on even beneath the individual sounds she could distinguish, and she wondered how anyone ever became accustomed to living in such a noisy place.

“Is it always like this?” she asked Goderic, gazing around as if she could see over the courtyard walls. Goderic shook his head.

“Oh, no. Of course not. It’s much quieter today than usual. You should be here on market days. Much more exciting.” Helga stared at him, wondering if he was being serious or if he was answering like that on purpose to tease her.

While Helga stared, Goderic crossed the cobbled space between their horses and the big door. A little bell hung from a hook beside it, and Goderic pulled out his wand and gave the bell two sharp taps. It rang out a pair of silvery little chiming notes that echoed musically in the walled yard. They only had to wait a few moments before the heavy door in front of them creaked open and a young woman came out backward, pushing the door open with her backside. She had sharp, quick eyes and a strong square jaw, and her black hair was a rat’s nest of curls tied up with a rag. She took one look at Goderic and sighed.

“Didn’ yew just leave ‘ere, Grifondour? Thought we was rid of yew til midsummer.”

Goderic grinned at her. “Lovely to see you as well, Finela.”

“Want the lady’s ‘orse in the stall beside yours?” she asked, chocking the door open with a stone and reaching for the horses’ leads. Beyond her, Helga saw not the inside of an inn as she had expected, but a stable. Goderic held up a hand to Finela.

“No stalls at the moment, Lady Pyk,” he said. “My friend and I will be leaving straight from here on our business in the city after we say hello to your father. You can just lead them through to the street entrance of the stable and have the groom’s boy wait with them there.”

“Oo- _oo_ -oh,” Finela simpered teasingly. She turned to Helga. “Thinks if he calls me _lady_ enough, I’ll be nicer to his ‘orse. Great flatterer, that one. Don’t let ‘im kiss yer hand. No tellin’ what he wants when he does that.” And before Helga could say anything in return, the woman had taken the two horses by their leads and pulled them through the door into the stable. Goderic waited a few moments in amused silence after she had closed the door behind her, and Helga began to wonder exactly how they were supposed to get into the inn itself. Then Goderic took out his wand again. Instead of ringing the bell this time, he placed the tip of the wand at eye level in the center of the door and drew it downward along the grain of the wood in a straight line.

“ _Nos admitte_ ,” he commanded, and the line he had traced with his wand emitted a pale glow. The door opened again, this time of its own accord, and Helga saw with pleasant surprise that there was no stable behind it now. The entrance now gave onto a dim interior space, and the hum of conversation and clanking objects leaked out into the courtyard from within. Goderic stepped back and waved Helga through first, giving her a little courtly bow. “Helga Hunlafsdottir, welcome to the inn of Gwydion Pyk.”

Helga stepped inside and was immediately greeted by the scent of bread being taken from ovens and porridge scorching in a cauldron. They had entered what looked like a small storage room full of sacks of flour, and she lifted the hem of her skirt to keep it from collecting the pale dust as they crossed to the small door that stood cracked open beyond a stack of buckets. The door was low and asymmetrical, and as she came out of it Helga saw that it was positioned beneath a crude staircase tucked in the corner of a large main room. The inn was built of an amalgam of dark stone and ancient Roman bricks held together with thick oak timbers (and, Helga mused, probably a little magic). The walls were dark, the ceiling low, and only the front of the building facing the street had windows; but these were unshuttered and the door flung open to admit light, and there was a merry fire burning in a wide hearth in the corner. This close to the hour of Terce, most travelers had either already broken their fast and gone, or had not yet come in to escape midday heat, and so only a couple of customers sat at the scattering of tables. Helga didn’t know if the usual clientele were mostly wizards or _úgaldr_ ; but the man closest to her was heating his drink with a wand. The other man seemed to be asleep next to a half-loaf of bread and an empty cup. Helga relaxed a little as Goderic followed her out of the storage room into the light.

“GODeric, ye mangy excuse fer a graphorn’s balls, wha’ are ye doin’ back in mah inn??” Helga jumped as a man appeared from behind what she had thought to be only a stack of drink barrels, but which apparently hid a door to another room. His hair flowed down to his shoulders in waves, a shade of white that said perhaps it had once been red-gold long ago. His beard and mustache were darker than the rest of his hair, pointed like a goat’s, and he wore a sweeping cloak covered in wild scribbles of embroidery that made it look as though he were wearing a tapestry he had stolen from someone’s wall. Actually, the closer he came, the more certain Helga felt that that’s exactly what he _was_ wearing. In fact, she thought she could see one of the wall hanging brackets still attached to a dragging corner. The man’s voice was brash, but he was grinning merrily, and Goderic threw out an arm and gripped his wrist in friendship.

“Well, nobody else will buy what you’re selling, you great wart off a niffler’s arse,” Goderic laughed, and the man guffawed along with him.

“Didnae think I’d see you again fer a month or more,” he said, dragging his tapestry robe over to a tall table where several pitchers sat beside empty drinking vessels. His voice had the sound of the Cumbrian peoples from that vague, mysterious part of the island between Yorvic, Alba, and the West, and Helga smiled at the musical lilt as she and Goderic followed him to the table. “I thought ye went home tae cutch wi’ those wee babbies ye’ve adopted?”

“Yes, well,” Goderic snorted, accepting the cup of cider he was handed. “The _wee babbies_ are part of the reason I’m here.”

“Tryin’ tae unload them on some other poor wretch already?” the old man chuckled, and Goderic grinned.

“Not exactly. Helga,” he said, turning around to her and holding out an arm in presentation, “this is my old friend Gwydion Pyk. Gwyd, this is Helga Hunlafsdottir.”

“Pleased to meet you, master Inkeeper,” Helga said – because she had no idea what the proper address for innkeeps would be. Gwydion Pyk threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh, Goderic,” he chortled, “I like this one. Think I’ll have that stitched on some cloth an’ sewn on mah robe. Master Inkeeper?? Oi, Muire, d’ye hear that?” he yelled over his shoulder in the vague direction of what must have been a kitchen. “I’m _Master_ Innkeeper now, an’ don’ ye ferget!”

Helga heard a muffled but obviously derisory reply from a woman somewhere out of sight, and both men laughed again. When they had settled, Goderic accepted another cup of cider, and this time Helga took one as well. Gwydion leaned on the tall table and eyed Goderic with interest. “Right. So. What are you and this lovely Norsewoman here to do wi’ those babbies of yours?”

“Well,” Goderic began, staring into his cup for a moment as he decided how to explain. “Helga has found herself in a similar situation to mine – she’s got three orphans knocking about her home in the Danelaw and not a clue how to handle them, because they’re all wizards.”

“Got enough to start your own war band, between ye,” Gwydion chuckled. “So what scheme are ye cookin’ up?”

“We’re going to ask the king for an endowment so we can start a school for orphaned witches and wizards,” Helga said bluntly. Gwydion Pyk stared at her for a moment open-mouthed; then he turned, took a much larger drinking vessel from a shelf behind him, and plunked it down in front of Goderic before beginning to fill it.

“Here,” he said. “Keep drinkin’ til ye’re thinkin’ straight, Goderic. Fionn’s balls, man!” He kept filling the vessel until Goderic patted his hand wryly.

“It’s not a joke, Gwyd. We’re on our way to the King’s Hall now.” He looked like he couldn’t quite believe it himself. Pyk laughed brokenly.

“Just goin’ tae …march right intae the Hall and say, ‘Och, great King Æthelræd, d’ye mind if we take a wee bit o’ the treasury to train up a score of tiny witches??’ Oh, aye, the _Bishop_ ’ll love that, won’t he?”

“Well obviously we’re not going to _tell_ him it’s for witchcraft,” Helga said over the rim of her cider cup. It really was very good cider. Goderic chuckled into his cup at her temerity.

“ _Obviously_ not,” Gwydion concurred, but there was laughter beneath his sarcasm. Helga could see this was a man for whom laughter was a natural state of being. He turned to the shelf behind him and pulled down a wooden tray that held some bread and a small pot of honey, plunking it down in front of them and slicing it with his wand. “Well, if you’re goin’ intae the snake pit, ye might as well go wi’ a full stomach. Eat up an’ tell me the plan while ye do.”

* * *

The morning mists from the river had dissipated by the time Helga and Goderic received their horses from Finela and rode out into the street in front of Pyk’s Inn. Helga glanced up at the front of the building as they rode away from it and saw that the bush over the door, symbolic of alehouses, had been lashed to a pike instead of an ordinary pole, a cheeky nod to the proprietor’s name. Around them the street teemed with people coming in and out of the Ludd Gate just to their left, where a large man with a sword stood guard under the crumbling Roman arch, on the lookout for troublemakers. Beyond the gate, Helga caught a glimpse of sunlight glinting off the waters of the Fleta as it ran down to join the Tames. Just across the road from the inn stood a small wooden chapel with a stone cross planted in the dirt by its door. The cross was carved with a rough picture of a man who seemed to be slicing his own cloak with his sword.

“Who is that?” Helga asked Goderic, pointing to the picture as they rode past it. Goderic didn’t need to look to answer her.

“Saint Martin,” he said, edging his stallion around a mud puddle. “That chapel is dedicated to him.”

“And… he is… a hero? In one of your Christian sagas?” Helga asked, knowing those were not the correct words but having no other context for her question. Goderic looked at her with raised eyebrows, apparently realizing for the first time that she was not a Christian Dane, but a true Norsewoman. Then he chuckled.

“I suppose it’s like that,” he allowed. “He’s a holy man, a saint. We look to saints as examples of how we should practice our faith.”

“I see,” Helga nodded. “Why is he cutting up his cloak?”

“That’s part of the story,” Goderic explained. “He was travelling in the winter, and saw a poor man with no cloak, so he cut his own in half and gave the piece to the poor man to keep warm.”

“Ah, and his story is an admonition to the hearer to be generous and care for the poor?” Helga smiled. “Oh, I like that. I shall read about him when I start learning Latin.”

“You’re going to learn along with the children?” Goderic laughed. The road now began to trend uphill as they wove the horses in and out of clusters of pedestrians. A few children stared at them, and more than one adult dipped their head in Goderic’s direction as he passed. Helga shrugged.

“Why not? We all can learn, no matter how old we grow. The children should be taught that, and I shall be proud to learn with them.”

“You’re an unusual person, Helga Hunlafsdottir,” Goderic chuckled, “but I won’t hold it against you.”

Up ahead, the narrow street broke abruptly into open ground as they reached the summit of the hill they had been climbing. Helga beamed with delight as she took in the view. The green cap of the hill was surrounded by a low stone border; in the center stood the largest building Helga had ever seen, a long and narrow church constructed of an amalgam of timbers and stone and roofed with old Roman tiles that shone a merry scarlet in the morning sun.

“St. Paul’s church,” Goderic offered, steering his horse around the south side of the green churchyard. “It’s the most important church in Lundenburh, where the king goes to worship. The royal house is just beyond these church lands.” Goderic turned his horse down a little pathway that led south across the patch of green landscape ringed in by the bustling town, and Helga followed, craning her neck to look at everything even after they had passed it. Off to their left, just outside the churchyard border and ringed by fruit trees, Goderic pointed out the home of Bishop Ælfstan. The path cut through the Bishop’s orchard, and they passed under a long row of cherry trees heavy with unripe golden fruit before coming to the end of the track at a low gate in a stone wall. Goderic glanced about to be sure they were unobserved; then he edged his wand-tip out of the leather wrist-cuff he wore and muttered at the latch. It dropped out of the catch and the wooden gate swung open toward them. Helga pursed her lips.

“You couldn’t be bothered to just get down from your horse and open it?”

“Why would I?” Goderic queried as he pushed his wand back up inside his cuff, and he looked so genuinely surprised by the notion that Helga simply sighed and smiled at him the way she would have done with a child. Goderic took no notice; he simply clucked at his horse and led him through the gate into the road beyond.

The street they entered ran parallel to the Tames along the back side of the Bishop’s land. On the other side of it stood a tall and broad rectangular hall with a sloping roof that glittered with vermillion Roman tiles. A constellation of smaller buildings of both brick and wood were gathered around it like chicks around a hen. Behind them, past a marshy swath of shoreline, Helga could see the wide sweep of the Tames sparkling in the morning sunlight.

One of the outbuildings was a stable, and it was toward this structure that Goderic directed his horse. The stableyard bustled with men getting onto horses or getting off them, and with stableboys running to and fro among them bringing or taking their mounts. Most of the men, Helga noticed, wore fine cloaks pinned with gold brooches and carried swords that glinted with quality metalwork. A stableboy came and took their reins without having to be called.

“Welcome back, my lord Salisberie,” the boy demurred, and, seeing that Helga seemed to be attached to Goderic, he hastily added, “And you as well, Lady.” She gave him a warm smile and thanked him, and he grinned as he led their horses away.

“Come on,” Goderic said, holding out his arm for her to take hold. “The king usually hears petitions before midday. Let’s see how many thegns we have to elbow out of the way to get in.” He led her across the stableyard to the entrance of the large hall, a ponderous wooden door set in a wall of herringbone-patterned stonework. There was a guard at the entrance, but he only glanced at Goderic and nodded in recognition as he pushed the door open.

The interior of the king’s hall was cool and dim after the bright morning sunshine and the glint of the river. Helga had to blink a few times to regain her vision. When her eyes had adjusted, she found herself in a square, open room looking up into the face of a tall middle-aged thegn with a thick grey beard and sharp eyes. She knew he must be a thegn of some status by the heavy gold and garnet brooch that held his cloak at his shoulder - and by the way he seemed to command the space in which he stood. He was looking her over appraisingly when Goderic inserted himself between them and clapped the man on the shoulder.

“Ælfric!” he said brightly, although Helga thought there was some restraint under the jocularity in his voice. “How goes the king’s business in Hamtun?”

“Well as it ever goes,” was the man’s guarded reply. He was smiling genially at Goderic, but the smile didn’t meet his eyes. Goderic extended an arm toward Helga.

“Helga Hunlafsdottir, this is Ælfric, the ealdorman of Hamtunscir. He sees to the king’s business in my part of the country.” Helga dropped a shallow bow to him, as that seemed to be what he expected.

“A Dane?” he said in her general direction, and she didn’t care for the way he said it. Goderic patted the man’s arm.

“The daughter of an acquaintance of mine,” he explained. “She has business with the king.”

“Oh, and here I thought you’d finally decided to marry,” Ælfric smirked. Goderic laughed at what seemed to be an old, well-used joke.

“If I had, I certainly wouldn’t bring my wife to Lundenburh for all of _you_ vultures to hover round.” He gestured at the room around them as he said it, and Helga noticed for the first time the dozen or so other men who stood in twos and threes in various parts of the large hall. Many of them sat on the bench that ran the whole way round the open chamber, and those who hadn’t stopped to stare at her were deep in quiet conversations. Helga thought they all looked like they were either waiting for orders, or waiting to be let in to see the king in the room that lay beyond the next door. “Is the king deeply engaged at the moment,” Goderic was asking, “or do you think he would hear us before midday?”

“He might,” Ælfric conceded, scratching his beard. “The Bishop and Leofwine have been arguing about land for the past half hour, so he’d probably welcome an interruption, to be honest.”

“Jesu, not them again,” Goderic sympathized. “Would you announce us, then?”

Ælfric crossed his arms and looked as though it were a hard decision for him; then he grinned through his thick beard. “I suppose I could be persuaded.” He cocked out an elbow and put a hand on his sword, which made his cloak swirl importantly as he turned toward the inner door. Halfway there, he spun back around. “Oh, Goderic, since we spoke of marriage - have you betrothed that brother of yours yet? Ælfgyth is twelve this Swithhun’s Day. They’ll both be old and withered at this rate before you make a decision!”

“Go on,” Goderic waved, shooing the ealdorman toward the inner door. “I’ll betroth him when he stops being so young and stupid. Until then, you don’t want him!” He kept up his genial smile until the corners of Ælfric’s cloak had disappeared through the big wooden doors; it then slipped off his face and was immediately replaced by an irritated sort of relief.

“You don’t like this ealdorman?” Helga asked him knowingly. Goderic grimaced.

“I….” He paused, searching for the correct sentiment. “I don’t know that I trust him to mean what he says. But the _king_ trusts him, above most of his other thegns, so I have to pretend to like him for the king’s sake.”

“Not to mention because he holds sway over your land?” Helga smiled. Goderic nodded.

“ _And_ to make it worse, he won’t cease trying to snatch Eaderic out from under me like taking an egg from under a dragon,” he whispered.

“And you don’t want your brother married to his daughter because you don’t trust him?” Helga said. Goderic snorted.

“That is one reason among a great many.”

He broke off as the inner doors opened and Ælfric came back out. “You can come in,” he said quietly. “Leofwine and Ælfstan are still gnawing at each other, but your entrance might shut them up if we’re lucky.” He stepped back and held the door open to Goderic, and Goderic took a deep breath.

“Jesu help us,” he murmured, giving Helga a ‘ _here we go’_ sort of look as he crossed himself. Helga patted his arm.

“D’you mind awfully if I ask Thunor to put his hand in as well?” she whispered, touching the hammer-shaped amulet under the fabric of her collar. Goderic shrugged.

“We’re about to beg a king for money to start a school for witches without actually telling him it’s for witches - while the _Bishop_ listens - I’ll take help from whoever’s interested in helping.” He grinned at her then, and they both chuckled as he ushered Helga inside with a bow. They slipped through the door and then Ælfric followed, closing it behind them.

The inner hall of King Æthelræd II was a long, broad rectangle of stone under a peaked roof supported by columns that were chipped and roughened by age. Helga’s shoetips brushed gently at a battered mosaic tile floor that had once shown a vibrant picture of a man in a robe, an image of whatever god the Romans had worshipped there when the building had been one of their riverside temples. Bits of the image were now missing, and Helga assumed the many hanging tapestries around her were hiding rough patches in the ancient walls. Beneath the largest and brightest of these tapestries sat the king, in a low stone seat draped with furs and cushions, surrounded by a cluster of thegns. Helga was surprised; the king wasn’t at all how she had pictured him. Æthelræd II was very young, surely only a year or two older than Helga herself. He was tall, slender, and elegant, a pretty thing like a picture from an illustrated Bible, and his lean form was draped languidly over the throne the way one might casually toss a cloak over a bench. His robe of red and white embroidery was wrinkled from restless adjusting, and the circle of gold on his blond curls was cocked to one side. The young king had his head propped on his hand, smushing up the side of his face against one high cheekbone, and he looked bored out of his mind.

In the empty space in front of the throne, two men were arguing. They looked like they had forgotten anyone else was in the room, something the king appeared to wish was true.

“That land belonged to my grandfather, and I have the charters to prove it!” one of them spat, a scruffy red-haired man in thegn’s dress whose hand was edging toward his sword. The other man, plump and clad in the robes of the Church, pointed a finger in his face.

“That is _not_ what the churchmen of Wirecestre are saying.”

“The churchmen of Wirecestre,” the thegn growled, “will say anything they think will get them another abbey!”

“How dare you accuse men of God of falsehood?!” squeaked the man who must surely be the Bishop.

“With the same words our Savior used: _vipers_ , all of them!”

Behind them, the king rolled his eyes so far that Helga could see the white of his eyeballs, and she had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at the sight. Ælfric apparently took this as his cue; he nodded to Goderic and then strode right up the center of the room, parting the two combatants like barley stalks.

“A petition is brought before you, my king,” he said loudly as he bent most of the way onto one knee, ignoring the protests of the Bishop and Leofwine. “Will you hear it?”

“God be _praised_ ,” the king groaned in reply, pushing himself back into an upright position. “Bishop, Hwicce, you’re both dismissed until after Sext. Go ...wave staffs at each other somewhere else until then.” He waved at the two complainants with a right hand heavy with garnet rings. Leofwine stared daggers at the Bishop for a moment and then stalked off to a corner of the room to sulk; the Bishop maintained his position near the throne, but looked as though he’d swallowed a frog. In the intervening silence, Ælfric stood back up and cleared his throat.

“Æthelræd, King of the English, raised by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the whole kingdom of Britain, will hear the business of his man Goderic, thegn of Salisberie. Approach and be recognized, thegn.”

Goderic nodded to Helga, and she followed his lead as he made for the center of the room. He planted his feet firmly on the noseless mosaic face and took a knee, inclining his head to the king, and Helga did likewise; she spread her skirts and dipped to the floor, not rising until she saw Goderic begin to stand again. 

“My King,” Goderic said in a voice much different than the one he used in conversing with her. He looked somehow taller and more impressive than he had done up til now, and Helga smiled inwardly - this was Goderic de Grifondour in his natural element.

“I thought you left Lundenburh for the summer, de Grifondour,” the king quipped. 

“I had done, Sire,” Goderic answered, “but upon returning home I was presented with a proposition from a lady which I could not easily turn away.”

“This lady you’ve brought with you here?” Æthelræd asked cheekily. “Oh, I don’t blame you, I couldn’t turn her away either.” He flicked his eyes over Helga in a way that would have been considered rude from any man without a crown on his head. “And exactly what lady would this be?”

“Sire, this is Hel--”

“The lady can introduce herself, de Grifondour - unless she’s a mute?” He raised his eyebrows in Helga’s direction, and the grin that was beginning to pluck the corners of his lips said that this was the most fun he was likely to have all day. Helga obliged him with another bow.

“No indeed, Sire, I am no mute,” she replied. “I am Helga Hunlafsdottir, of Little Witchingham, in the Danelaw.”

“A Norsewoman? Goderic, your social circle is broadening. How progressive of you.” The king winked at her before turning back to Goderic and settling into a more comfortable position. “Alright, de Grifondour. Tell me what business has brought you all the way back from the countryside.”

“My King,” Goderic began, “as you yourself well know, I have of late come to hold the wardship of two orphan boys from Normandy.”

“Cheeky devils, but I liked them,” the king commented parenthetically. Goderic nodded.

“Aye, Sire. Good boys, both of high rank. It happens that this lady has also recently found herself keeping four orphaned children in her home in the Danelaw.”

“Norse children?” asked Æthelræd.

“Two of them, Sire,” Helga answered, before it occurred to her that she hadn’t been directly addressed. The king only looked at her, so she went on. “Two are Saxon boys.”

“We have heard each other’s counsel,” Goderic continued, “and agreed that we are no fit guardians for so many children at once - seven, if my brother Eaderic is included in the number. And we have thought it wise that they all be given some formal education.”

“Naturally,” the king acquiesced. “Are you requesting they be found places in cathedral schools, then?”

Goderic glanced at Helga, and she held her breath. This was where the real adventure began.

“Actually, Sire… we are hoping to create our own school.”

“Hmph!” The noise came from the Bishop, who still hadn’t roamed far from the place near the throne where he’d been arguing. “Someone else wanting to usurp from the Church. Taking cues from Leofwine, are we, de Grifondour?”

“No disrespect is meant to the church, sir,” Helga said, hoping that was the correct title for a bishop and immediately suspecting that it was not. The Bishop narrowed his eyes at her.

“Do you allow this woman to speak out of turn like this, my King?” He addressed Æthelræd, but he kept looking at Helga. Æthelræd laughed aloud.

“Right now, Bishop, I’m fond of anyone who interrupts you _or_ Leofwine. Go on, I’m listening.”

“Sire, the cath--” began Goderic, but the king waved at him dismissively.

“No, not you,” he said, grinning. “I want the lady to tell me. Go on, lady. Speak.”

Helga flicked a nervous glance at Goderic, but he simply shrugged and took a step backward. Taking a deep breath, Helga picked up what he had been saying.

“Sire, as the Bishop rightly argues, the cathedral schools do good work. They teach orphan boys to read and do sums, so they may make their way in the world - or even one day join the church.” She bobbed a little curtsy to the Bishop, who seemed still suspicious but somewhat placated by this. “But doing business and reading religious texts,” she went on, “are not the places _these_ children we have as wards were born to. They are noble children, sons of thegns and Norman lords. They should, when they grow to be men, be masters of their households. They should marry noblewomen and raise sons in service of the king; they should know how to command servants, and how to conduct themselves here in the king’s presence, and how to make war. These are not things taught by the church - indeed, as it should be, because they are worldly things, are they not, Bishop?” Helga steeled herself for an attack, but the Bishop’s face had shifted - he wasn’t looking exactly _friendly_ , but he at least no longer seemed hostile.

“Indeed not,” he murmured contemplatively. King Æthelræd leaned forward on his throne, the boredom he had been steeped in when they’d arrived gone from his face. He looked now very much like a king.

“So you propose to gather these noble children and educate them to be thegns and ladies of rank - as their families would do if they had them?”

“Aye, Sire,” Goderic nodded. “We would take the six orphans we have already, and any others we should find who are without family to guide them, and set up an estate somewhere where they can be instructed as befits their place.”

“And so what do you need me for, Goderic?” the king asked, though he clearly already knew the answer. Goderic inclined his head.

“Other than your excellent lordship and guidance, my king? The same thing the cathedral schools require to operate, Sire--”

“My money,” Æthelræd finished. “You want me to dip into the treasury.”

“If it please you, my king,” Goderic bowed. “You are a young man, Sire, and praise Jesu you will be on the throne for many years to come. These thegns that fill your hall right now-- ” he gestured around him “--they are full of wisdom ...and full of _years_. They do you great service; but when they leave you to join the household of the King of Heaven, as we all must, you will need wise and learned _young_ lords to take their places at your side. What better investment, then, than to spend your wealth for the training of future thegns?”

“How long did you practice that speech, Goderic?” King Æthelræd grinned. “Those are the fanciest words I’ve ever heard you use.” There was quiet laughter from a few of the gathered thegns, and Goderic spread his hands and gave a self-deprecating smile. The king sighed and sat back on his throne. “You--” he pointed suddenly at Helga. “Tell me what my money would be used for. Specifically.”

“Well, Sire,” Helga said, “firstly for the payment of scholars to teach the children. Goderic can teach the skills of warfare and horsemanship, and I can teach the girls ladies’ arts, but we would hire learned men to teach them languages and history and arithmetic and ...other skills.” She paused for breath, hoping the king wouldn’t inquire about the _other skills_. “And secondly, for the bodily sustenance of the children. We would want to clothe them as fits their rank, and feed them well.”

King Æthelræd tilted his head back, sinking more comfortably onto the throne, and now he looked to Helga like a young boy again. After a few moments, he pursed his lips and turned to Bishop Ælfstan.

“What do you think, Bishop? Saint James tells us to care for orphans in their need - would you say this falls under that mandate?”

“Perhaps,” the Bishop said carefully; he was still staring at Helga, and she realized suddenly that he was trying to see what hung at the end of the chain around her neck. Thankfully it was tucked into the front of her apron dress - she doubted the sight of Thunor’s hammer would have helped their case with him. 

“What about you, Ælfric?” the king said to the ealdorman. Ælfric crossed his arms.

“I would be interested in how _much_ of the treasury de Grifondour wants you to hand over, my king. Does he have an amount per year in mind?”

Goderic glared at his ealdorman for a split second before inclining his head again to the king. “I would not know the precise cost until we are certain how many children we will have, and how many scholars we will hire. But as soon as we learn that, I can give you a written sum, Sire. And - this should ease your mind as well as those of your councillors - the cost would surely grow less with each year.”

“Why less?” Æthelræd queried.

“Because once we begin, we will surely gain support from wealthy men of the kingdom who wish to help our endeavor,” Goderic supplied. “With such contributions, our need for royal wealth would grow smaller.”

“Hmm,” Æthelræd mused. His hand strayed to the tassel of his red cloak and began to twirl it absently as he pondered. Finally, he leaned forward again. “This is an unusual request for you, Goderic de Grifondour. I can’t remember you ever asking me for royal money before.” He glanced questioningly at a man in the corner who held a parchment scroll, and the man shook his head _no_. The king nodded. “No, indeed. There are some thegns with a habit of holding out their hands to me at every opportunity, but you have never been among them. I appreciate that; and it makes me much more inclined to humor you.” He paused again, mulling over the idea just long enough to make Helga start feeling uncomfortable. Then he waved to the man with the scroll.

“Sire?” the man said, approaching the throne. Æthelræd sighed.

“Make a record of this potential endowment,” he said. “Goderic, when you and this lady decide how many children you’ll be keeping and what it will cost you, I expect you to send us a formal request in writing. My scribe here will do some sums of his own in the meantime, some estimations. If your request compares well with his sums, we’ll make the necessary arrangements. And then, of course, we’ll want to have a visit from Rodolphus or perhaps Walrand in a year or so - as a way of judging the effectiveness of your instruction. See if you’re turning out good little thegns with all our money.”

“Of course, my king,” Goderic bowed. “I’m sure the boys would be happy to come back and see you.”

“You can send them with this good lady,” the king grinned at Helga. “She can give me a full report then.” 

Helga shot a look at Goderic, who smothered a chuckle and motioned for her to answer. “Of course, Sire,” she responded dutifully, grateful she had remembered to lace the strings at the top of her collar that day. “I would be honored to receive an invitation to return to my king’s hall.”

“Indeed?” Æthelræd smirked, and Helga blushed.

“ _WELL_ ,” an impatient voice suddenly interjected from behind them, and Leofwine the thegn appeared at Goeric’s elbow. “If Salisberie is quite finished with his petition, then--”

“Oh, God, are you still here?” the king groaned. “I’d hoped you’d wandered outside and gotten lost.” He sighed. “Very well. Dismissed, Goderic. Unfortunately for me. Shame you can’t take Leofwine and the Bishop with you as you go.”

Goderic bowed low, hiding a grin. “I would fain oblige you, Sire, but I fear the Hwicce need their intrepid thegn more than I, and without the Bishop here, who would shepherd his flock?”

The young king rolled his eyes. “Ugh. Completely useless to me, as usual, de Grifondour. Well, go on then, so these two can prod each other in privacy.” Someone opened the hall door at his dismissive wave, but he and Goderic grinned at each other as Goderic backed away from the throne.

“Deepest thanks, my king. You will have no regrets.”

“Lies. I will have a multitude of regrets, all of them directly related to my occupation of this throne. See that you aren’t one of them.” And having given this pronouncement, he plopped his face back onto his hand and waved reluctantly at Leofwine to continue presenting his case. Goderic and Helga both bowed once more before slipping back out into the antechamber of the hall.

* * *

They rode back through the Bishop’s orchard in a cheery silence, broken occasionally by Goderic quietly chuckling to himself. When they were almost back to Paul’s church, Helga gave him an amused sigh.

“Would you like to share the source of your laughter, or should I just guess?” 

Goderic found a single ripe cherry on a low branch and plucked it as they rode out of the orchard into the street. He popped it into his mouth, winced at the tartness of it, and then grinned at her. “Just that if I had known it would go that well, I would have been bringing attractive women with me _every_ time I presented a petition.”

“Oh, I’m _so_ happy to have helped,” she said playfully. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me? I could have untied the neck of my dress, and we wouldn’t even have needed to speak.” Goderic didn’t seem to be at all chastened by her sarcasm. He just laughed aloud.

“I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, to be honest,” he chuckled. “The king is fond of Norsewomen. Married one, you know.”

“Oh?” Helga asked, reflecting that the king didn’t behave as though he were married to anyone. Goderic was nodding in reply.

“Ælfgifu. Daughter of the eorl Thored of Yorvic. You look a bit like her, actually. He told me once that if I wanted a quiet and boring marriage, then I should take a Saxon woman, but that Norsewomen were infinitely more fun because they’ll always answer you back.”

“And where was the king’s wife today?” Helga asked, ignoring his socio-cultural commentary. She hadn’t seen her anywhere in the hall or its surrounds - in fact, Helga herself had been the only woman present all morning. Goderic shrugged.

“Somewhere in one of those royal buildings, I suppose. Probably pushing out another baby.” When Helga balked at him, he chuckled. “Well, she’s been with child every time I’ve ever seen her. I can’t even tell you how many little athelings there are at the moment. I lost count.” Helga shook her head.

“Not for me, thank you,” she said disdainfully. “I think I’ll just skip being married and go straight to being the elderly village witch who frightens the _úgaldr_ by mumbling under her breath whenever they pass.”

“I thought you liked children?”

“Oh, I do, and there are plenty of them roaming about for me to collect and care for without having to _create_ any of my own, thank you.”

“Well, you can afford not to, I suppose,” Goderic said as they steered their horses back onto the descent of Ludd Hill. “You don’t have a title that you have to worry about passing down. But if I don’t marry soon, and find someone for Eaderic too, there will be at least three wizards on the _gemót_ who’ll be plotting to murder us both and take the Salisberie title for themselves.” 

“So, what were those _great many reasons_ , then?”

“Hmm?”

“Your reasons for not wanting Eaderic to marry Ælfric’s daughter. Besides your obvious personal feelings for the man.”

“Oh,” Goderic snorted. “Well, the first that comes to mind is that Eaderic would keel over from apoplexy if I stuck him with her.”

“He doesn’t care for her either?”

“Got one look at her last year and told me later that he’d rather marry one of my horses. A _black_ -haired girl, he’s always telling me. He wants me to find him a black-haired girl like those women from Gwent and Powys. As though I’m just wading through a sea of options and can pick him one like cloth at market day.”

Helga laughed brightly. “I think he has a very high opinion of what you’re capable of, Goderic. He clearly idolizes you.”

“Mmm,” Goderic frowned. “I don’t think he worships _me_ as much as the _idea_ of being the Thegn of Salisberie. Maybe once he’s grown I’ll just retire and let him have the title. Go off and have adventures, chase some dragons, and let him be the politician. And _that_ , of course, is the other reason I can’t let Ælfric have him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Ælfric’s not a wizard. And my brother will have to marry a witch.”

“Even if he falls in love with an _úgaldr_ girl?” Helga asked, her brows drawing downward. Goderic pressed his lips together.

“Love doesn’t enter into it,” he said bluntly. “Look, I have nothing against mixed marriages on principle. I’m not like those wizards who rail about keeping the race pure and all that. If _you_ want to go and marry a _mundani_ man, have at it. I’ll present him with his new sword myself. But Eaderic and I… we have a responsibility that lies above that. The Thegn of Salisberie has to be a liaison between the magical people and the _mundani_ king. It’s delicate and political - and whatever woman marries into that has to be able to understand the situation from the inside. Not to mention, we have to make certain that our sons are wizards so the _next_ Thegn of Salisberie can continue doing what we do. So he has to marry a witch, preferably from a notable family involved in the _gemót_ , and so do I.”

“Is that why you’re well over twenty and still not married?” Helga smirked. “Can’t find a suitable candidate?”

“My options are limited,” Goderic smiled wryly. They had now arrived back in front of Gwydion Pyk’s inn, and Goderic swung himself off his stallion and tossed the reins to the boy who came out to meet them. Helga slipped off the palfrey and did the same.

“So… what now?” she asked as Goderic headed for the inn’s door. He shook the wrinkles out of his fine red cloak and offered her his arm again.

“Food, I hope,” he grinned. “And while we eat, we can discuss how we’re going to go about collecting all the magical orphans you plan to teach at this school we just bought.”

* * *

Closer to midday, the tables in Pyk’s inn were considerably fuller now than when Helga and Goderic had ridden out to the king’s hall. Helga noticed that none of the current patrons were heating their drinks with wands, and she supposed that those among them who were wizards chose to blend quietly with the _úgaldr_ travellers who knew nothing about Gwydion except that he had bread and cider for sale. The two of them were led by Finela to the room behind the stacked barrels, which turned out to be Gwydion Pyk’s private chamber. Helga found the place irresistibly charming, if a bit confusing.

If there had not been a bed tucked into the corner of the room, Helga would not have readily known it was someone’s living space. The room held a scattering of unrelated objects, some of which made sense and some of which did not. A spear propped in a corner was topped by a battle helmet with a bent noseplate; a nearly complete set of rune amulets hung suspended from the ceiling by strings; a tapestry fragment was draped over a woad-painted deer skull on a shelf above the bed; and Helga nearly tripped over what she initially thought was a boulder on the floor, but that turned out to be an entire segment of a Roman fresco that had come out of the wall of some ruin. The bed itself was nearly hidden under more of the same tapestry that Gwydion wore as a cloak. Several of the metal rings which had attached it to a wall were still looped into the fabric. The fact that he wore the rest of it around his shoulders now seemed the most normal thing about him.

Bread, cheese, and ale were brought in for them by Gwydion’s wife Muire, while the innkeeper himself shuffled around the room clearing away debris so they could sit down, and uncovering a tree stump that he used as a table for the food. Goderic settled himself on a stool Gwydion unearthed for him under a pile of scrolls, while Helga ended up sitting on the piece of Roman wall.

“By Hercules, who put out the lights??”

Helga squealed and jumped up off the fresco, nearly spilling the plate of cheese into the floor. She and Goderic watched in bewilderment as the painted figure on the plaster, a young man carrying a wine jug, swiveled his head in various directions and blinked his eyes at the sudden return of the light that Helga’s skirt had blocked.

“Um… sorry?” Helga said, nonplussed. “I… I didn’t see you there.”

“Aye,” Gwydion grunted, dropping down onto the bed. “Nor would ye, because that’s precisely how the little rogue wanted it. He likes tae hold still til some poor soul sits down, an’ then he comes out wi’ that _who put out the lights_ nonsense, just tae hear ‘em yell out an’ watch ‘em jump. Right, Antonius?”

“Spoilsport,” the man in the painting said, crossing his arms. Gwydion waved dismissively at him.

“Just sit back down, lass. If he’s in the dark long enough, he’ll go tae sleep an’ we’ll be shut of him.”

Gingerly, Helga lowered herself back onto the stone block; Antonius didn’t call out again, but Helga was sure she could hear him chuckling to himself from behind her legs. Gwydion watched her face and grinned.

“Donnae ye mind the clutter,” he said as he passed Goderic the ale jug. “I’ve got a bad habit of bringin’ home stray objects when I’m drunk - can’t return them the next day because I can’t remember where I got ‘em from, and half of ‘em are bewitched anyway. Muire won’t allow me to drink anywhere but here now. Says we don’t have enough rooms in the place for me to bring home any more artifacts.”

Helga glanced around her and thought that Muire was probably correct in that estimation.

While they ate, Goderic recounted their meeting with the king for Gwydion’s benefit. The innkeeper appeared to share Goderic’s distaste for ealdorman Ælfric, and had a good laugh at the news that the Bishop was still fighting Leofwine for that scrap of land in Mercia. When Goderic told him how easily King Æthelræd had granted their petition for funds, Gwydion shook his head in bemusement. 

“Well,” he shrugged, “there’s no accountin’ for what a young man’ll agree tae do for a pretty woman. Did think he’d put up more of a fuss, though.”

“I’ve been told I resemble the king’s wife,” Helga said wryly, “and that perhaps that tipped the balance. But in any case, I think that may have been the easy part of our adventure.”

“Why?” Gwydion asked, finishing a cup of ale and pouring another. “What’s tae do now that ye’ve got the endowment?”

“Now we have to actually collect the children,” Goderic sighed. “Somehow, we’ve got to find all the orphaned witches and wizards who haven’t already been taken in by a guardian, and spirit them away to whatever location we choose for the school.”

“Hearth messages?” Gwydion suggested. “Put the word out on the network that ye’re lookin’ fer orphans?”

“That would find some of them,” Helga agreed. “But what about the ones who are homeless, that nobody knows about? I found Hnossa, the little witch I’m keeping, wandering about the forest with her brother, living on berries. Nobody who got a hearth message would have known about her. And sending owls with letters would only work with people who can read.”

“Aye, an’ ye can’t very well just pop in and visit every wizarding house in the country, can ye?” Gwydion mused.

“No, and even if we could, that wouldn’t find us the _úgaldr-_ born children - and they’re the ones most likely to find themselves without anyone to teach them.”

“Interesting conundrum we’ve made for ourselves, eh, Gwyd?” Goderic said, helping himself to more ale. Gwydion nodded.

“Aye, quite the riddle.”

“Send ‘em tae Eryr house, ye great numpty!”

All three of them jumped at the words, and Goderic bit his piece of bread so sharply that half of it was sheared away and fell to the floor. The voice was Gwydion’s - but it hadn’t come from Gwydion’s mouth.

“Och, and who asked you?” Gwydion said indignantly, attempting to lever himself up off the bed and failing. He spoke in the general direction of the far corner of the room, where the helmet and spear were leaning, but Helga could see nobody there who could have produced the voice.

“ _They_ asked me!” the voice came again. “Well, they asked _you_ , an’ that’s basically the same thing.”

Helga got up from her seat and strode over to the corner, pulling her wand from her belt. She could have sworn that the voice had come from the helmet with the bent noseplate, but it appeared to be quietly propped on the spear haft as it had been when they’d arrived. She poked her wand into the open eye socket.

“Ach, watch where ye’re stickin’ that wand, hen! Ye’d put a man’s eye out!” The face of the helmet had danced to life as it spoke those words, and the ridge of metal above the eye opening now lifted with a creak as though it were raising a critical brow at her. Helga sighed and crossed her arms.

“More bewitched stray objects, Master Pyk?”

“Damned useless thing,” was Gwydion’s reply. “Put a charm on it so I could tell it things I needed tae remember, an’ it would tell ‘em back tae me in me own voice. Except now all it does is insult me!”

“Aye,” answered the helmet, “an’ you’re the one who’s useless, ye ken?”

“Go boil yerself,” Gwydion retorted, and he tossed a hard piece of crust that clanged hollowly off the helmet’s forehead. Goderic reached over then and put a hand on his friend’s wrist.

“What was it talking about, though?” he asked, picking up his lost chunk of bread from the floor and brushing off dust. “It said to send us somewhere?”

“Aye!” the helmet responded. “Somethin’ he told me tae remember months ago. Eryr house.”

“What’s Eryr house?” Helga asked the helmet, which seemed flattered that she was talking directly _to_ it instead of _about_ it.

“They’re a family, hen. In the West, in Cymru. Got the best damn scryers this side of the sea. Always have. The Cymry are born with a gift for _seein’_ with magic, just like Beowulf over there an’ his people are born good at _killin’_ things with it.” The helmet nodded slightly in Goderic’s direction, rocking on the spear haft, and Helga pursed her lips to contain a giggle. Gwydion’s face lit up.

“Oh…. aye! I remember now. That’s right, I did tell ye tae remind me of them if I needed ‘em. Aye, Goderic, that’s who ye’ll want to see. One of the witches of the Eryr family.”

“A witch, specifically?” Goderic asked, and both Gwydion and the helmet nodded.

“Oh, aye,” the innkeeper confirmed. “Always the women who have the divining gifts over there. The men specialize in conjurin’, the women in scryin’. You’ll want the eldest woman of the house of Eryr, whoever she is.”

“You know who she is, sieve-fer-brains!” the helmet interjected helpfully. “Lady Rhonwen, remember? Married that fussy Saxon thegn from Croes Ati?”

“I bewitched ye tae _remind_ me, no tae insult me fer mah poor memory!” Gwydion spat at the helmet. He poured himself another cup of ale and took a long drink. Goderic’s brows drew together.

“Do you mean Rhonwen, the wife of Æthelweard Hræfnsclawu?”

“Aye, that’s the one!” the helmet piped. Goderic nodded sagely, and Helga returned to her seat on the fresco block.

“Do you know her, Goderic?”

“I know _of_ her,” he mused. “She attended the _gemót_ last year with her husband. She’s the daughter of an old wizarding family from the Rhufoniog region of Gwynedd. They’re important among our kind, but have lost a lot of their status among the _mundani_ , so everyone said Æthelweard married beneath himself. Then, of course, we _saw_ her, and decided that _she’s_ the one who married beneath her.”

“That Æthelweard’s an old fussy-britches before his time,” the helmet added, and Goderic nodded.

“And _she_ looks like the last of the druids who met Rome at Ynys Mon. If it were up to me, I’d have her sitting in the _gemót_ instead of him.”

“I like the sound of her, then,” Helga smiled. “So if we go to her, she can use a scrying glass to find all the children we’d need to gather?”

“Aye,” said Gwydion, “and probably find you a location as well. She’ll be happy tae help, I think - always put a great stock in learnin’, those Cymry. You tell her it’s a school ye’re building, an’ she’ll probably sign up tae teach herself.”

“Excellent,” said Goderic. He put his cup down firmly on the stump. “Then the lady Rhonwen will be our next stop. We’ll return to my estate tonight and send a message ahead so her household will be expecting visitors, and you can give your father an update.”

“And now that we know it will actually happen, you can tell the boys what we’ve been up to?” Helga suggested, and he agreed.

“Of course. I’ll have a talk with them after dinner. And then tomorrow, if Hræfnsclawu is ready to receive guests, we’ll take another trip.”

“More apparating. Hurrah,” said Helga dismally, and Goderic laughed as Gwydion patted her shoulder and put another cup of ale in her hand.

* * *

“Will we learn magic in other languages?”

“You won’t separate us, will you?”

“You mean, we’ll be leaving King’s Worthy?”

Helga walked back into Goderic’s hall from the kitchen late that evening to find her host sitting at the dining table with Walrand, Rodolphus, and Eaderic, being harried by a volley of questions. Outside the sky was turning rosy pink, boding well for tomorrow’s journey to Cymru. They had come home from Lundenburh hours earlier laden with little gifts for the boys from Gwydion’s strange stash of artifacts – a leather ball that bounced of its own accord, some rune amulets that changed colors depending on the caster’s mood, and a quill that corrected the user’s writing - and had waited until after dinner before explaining to them the endeavor they were about to set out upon. While Goderic had told the boys all about the school for wizards they would soon be attending, Helga had busied herself with a hot bath in a large wooden tub in the kitchen. The elderly witch who had helped her out of her cloak the night before had heated the water with her wand, and had poured some lovely smelling potion into it that turned the water colors and made her skin feel soft. The same witch now followed her out of the kitchen, trying to get a wooden comb into her wet hair as she made to join Goderic at the table. When she sat down on the end of the bench beside Walrand, the old woman saw her chance and began combing her hair without hesitation, and Helga didn’t protest. 

“Enjoying yourself, Eadgifu?” Goderic smiled at her, and the old woman grinned toothlessly.

“Haven’t had a girl to take after since yer mum passed,” said Eadgifu, pulling the comb slowly through Helga’s long blonde waves. “All boys. Nobody fer me to fuss o’er til now.”

“Oh, I imagine Goderic’s hair is long enough for you to comb and plait,” Helga told her, winking at Goderic, and he shook his head. 

“ _Don’t_ give her ideas.”

Helga and the old woman giggled together, and Goderic saw he was now outnumbered.

“So you’re going away again tomorrow?” Walrand asked, and Helga started to nod before remembering that her hair was being combed. Goderic did it for her.

“Yes. To find all the other children you’ll be learning with,” he told the boy. “Helga, I think you should speak with your father tonight at the hearth and let him know our plans. Perhaps he can bring the other children to stay here for a few days - so they can become acquainted with these three while we’re making arrangements.” At this, Walrand’s face lit up, and Rodolphus imitated his smile. Helga nodded her agreement as Eadgifu tapped her hair with her wand to dry it.

“It would be easier on him, not having to care for all four of them on his own. How would you like that, Eadgifu? A little girl to spoil for a while?”

“Oh!” the old woman gasped, clapping wrinkled hands. “I’d feel like a young maidservant again!”

“A girl?” Rodolphus said doubtfully, and Helga gave him a reassuring grin.

“A very uncomplicated girl, trust me. You have nothing to worry about.” Turning back to Goderic, she asked, “So you’ve spoken to the Hræfnsclawu house, and they’re prepared for our arrival?”

“Won’t be going there,” Goderic said over his mead cup. “Æthelweard is off on some journey to Saxony, has been for a month or more. His wife and daughter have gone back to Rhufoniog to visit her family until he returns. So I contacted them there, and their steward said they’d be more than happy to receive two guests. We leave for Cymru in the morning.”

Helga sighed. “Perhaps if I apparate often enough, I’ll become accustomed to it.”

“Actually,” Goderic said, “I had something else in mind - something not quite as abrupt as apparating. For your benefit.” He was trying to hide a conspiratorial smile, and was failing. 

“Like what?” Helga asked, and his grin widened.

“Surprise. You’ll see. Just …tell me you’re not afraid of heights.”

“I’ve never had cause to be,” Helga answered cautiously. “Should I?”

Goderic only grinned and said, “You can let me know that in the morning.”


	6. The Scrying Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A word about words. This chapter names many regions and locations in pre-Norman Britain, and where possible, I have tried to call the places what they would have been called in the 10th century, only using modern names when the old words or spellings would cause unsurmountable confusion (or sound pretentious). "Scotland" did not yet exist as a concept, and so I have used the names of its old kingdoms. "Britain" will be called either Albion or Prydein when referred to as a whole. I have also made the decision to consistently refer to Wales as Cymru from this point on in the story - not only because it is what the inhabitants of that country would have called it, but because "Wales" itself is a bit of a Saxon insult to begin with. I fear that I have, at some point in previous chapters, used the name Wales without realizing it, and for this I apologize. I would go back and fix it, but frankly, I just turned 30 and don't have the energy or the remaining lifespan to devote to the task of searching and re-uploading. Going forward, though, it will be Cymru or nothing. Happy reading!

“Are you quite sure this is less abrupt than apparating?”

“Well, it certainly makes for a better landing.”

Helga and Goderic stood at the bank of the Icen, near the place where they had apparated the day before, bathed in the golden orange light and fine mist of a first summer sunrise. It was very early morning, and the whole landscape around them seemed still asleep - even the insects hadn’t yet begun to make their droning mild-weather noises. Only one thing in the whole scene appeared awake and alert. Standing in front of them, reins held tightly in the hands of Eafa the groom, was the most beautiful winged horse Helga had ever seen. He was a blue roan stallion, his muzzle and legs a deep black that faded into a shimmering, dappled iron color across his withers. The charcoal feathers in his wings caught the morning sun and sparkled like black stardust. He was tugging fitfully at his reins, his front hoof pawing restlessly at the streambank. Helga took a deep breath.

“Are you sure?” she repeated, and Goderic chuckled.

“His name is Heremod, and he’s a Granian horse, so yes, I’m sure.” He patted the horse’s nose, and the animal snorted in protest. “Abraxans have the pulling power, but Granians are much faster. He’ll take us to Cymru in a few hours. Not as immediately gratifying as apparating, but fast enough to get us there by midday, and without making you feel ill.” He looked as if he wanted to be congratulated for his chivalry, so Helga managed a weak smile and thanked him; but the horse had a wild, manic look in its eye that made her doubtful.

“Won’t people notice?” she said as Goderic stirruped his hands for her to climb onto the Granian’s back. “If we come flying into their village on a winged horse, I mean. Even if you are a wizard, you don’t see them very often.”

“The Eryr family live in the middle of a forest,” Goderic reassured her, “so there is no village, _mundani_ or otherwise. We’ll fly high until we get there, and then we’ll descend into the deep forest near their estate and climb the hill from there. No chance of accidents. My word as a thegn.” He climbed up onto Heremod’s back behind her, and Eafa handed the reins up to him.

“Now remember, my lord Grifondour,” the master of horse admonished, “you be sure to tell their master of horse that he likes a hot mash flavored with flutterby blooms after a long trip. If he doesn’t get it, like as not he’ll refuse to carry you home.”

“Don’t worry, Eafa, I remember the last time,” Goderic nodded, and Heremod tossed his mane snappily in response. He was prancing even more now that he sensed flight was imminent, and Helga grasped Goderic’s wrist.

“Goderic, where do I hold on?” she hissed. “You’ve got the reins, and I don’t think he’d appreciate my fingers clawing at his mane.” Behind her, she felt Goderic’s stomach shake as he laughed softly. 

“No, he certainly wouldn’t. Just hold onto my arms, and you’ll be fine.” He put his arms under hers on each side of her and held the reins in both hands, and she laid her hands on his leather wrist cuffs like the arms of a chair.

“Well, at least I know that if one of us falls off, we’ll both plummet to our deaths together.” She started to turn around and make a face as she finished this statement, but before she could twist all the way around, she heard Goderic laugh - and then they were no longer on the ground.

Such was the speed with which the earth dropped out from under them that Helga let out a little scream before she could clamp her jaws together. She dug her fingernails into Goderic’s leather cuffs. This was, in fact, _quite_ as abrupt as apparating, thank you very much, and she planned to tell him so if she didn’t die before they stopped moving. But a moment later, they broke into a layer of low clouds and Heremod slowed his arrow-like ascent into something resembling a slow canter. His shiny charcoal wings opened to their full span on either side of them, and his wingspan was so massive that Helga’s initial terror was extinguished in fascination as she watched droplets of moisture begin to collect on the quivering feathers.

“Absolutely exquisite beast, isn’t he?” Goderic said behind her, and she nodded. “My father,” he went on, “brought a small stud of breeding Granians with him from Normandy when he married my mother, and I’m told those came from a herd that descended straight from the original Norse wild Granians. Heremod here is the best stallion in my herd.” He patted the horse’s neck and received a whinny of agreement.

“How do you keep the villagers from finding them?”

“They live in the forest outside King’s Worthy. There’s a barrier spell on the forest border to stop them getting out, and a repelling charm on it to keep the _mundani_ from wandering in. That way they have the whole forest to roam in, and a little space above it to fly around, and the _mundani_ are none the wiser.”

“That’s what we’ll have to do, won’t we?” Helga mused, watching Heremod’s wings brush swaths of cloud out of their path. “Repelling charms. On the school?”

“Hmm,” Goderic grunted. “Yes, I hadn’t thought about that, but I suppose we will. Repelling charms all around it to keep the _mundani_ out - and perhaps an illusion to make the location appear unappealing to them in the first place.”

“Of course, we have to find a location first.”

“I think the lady Hræfnsclawu would be able to show us some good candidates in her scrying glasses, as well as finding children.”

“Well, then I hope she’s as eager to help as Gwydion implied.”

* * *

Their journey to the northwest was gentle and unhindered, the smooth flight of the Granian horse belying how fast they were actually moving. Every half hour or so, Goderic would descend just below the cloud cover to check their course, but the majority of their morning was spent gliding through an absolutely silent dreamworld of clouds whose colors shifted with the sun from gold to cream to brilliant white. To pass the time Helga sang the Charm Song for Goderic, who had never heard it before - unlike her palfrey, Heremod seemed to enjoy it - and Goderic sang the popular song “Deor.” Helga was pleased to discover that he had a lovely deep singing voice, smooth and resonant like his speech, and she applauded him warmly in spite of the depressing choice of song. Helga told him about each of the children she had been caring for, and Goderic told her stories of his father’s dragon hunting in Normandy. After a while they both had to put up the hoods of their cloaks to keep the little droplets of water from clinging in their hair; Heremod was already glistening wet, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Just before midday Goderic directed the horse to drop below the clouds again, and this time he stayed there, giving Helga a good look at the terrain over which they flew. Cultivated farmland and pastures far below were stitched with a lacework of streams and divided by patches of unworked moorland or strips of thick forest, all of it in deep and enchanting shades of green. Tiny white specks that Helga assumed were sheep were scattered here and there, so small she couldn’t really see them for what they were. Cutting through all of it, winding here and there in a broadly northwest-to-southeast path, was a tall and sturdy turf wall with a deep ditch on its western side. A gravel walking path ran along the flat top of the wall, and the ditch was filled with murky water. As they crossed over it, their shadow jumping up at them and then flickering back down to the grass again, Goderic laid a hand on her shoulder.

“That’s the great Mercian Wall below us,” he offered. “It marks the western edge of England - everything from here onward is Cymru. We’re very close now. See that forest ahead?”

Helga did see it. Rising up in the distance before them was a range of low hills draped in a blanket of dense green trees. It looked a great distance away, but Helga felt a change in the muscles of the horse beneath her, and Heremod suddenly put on a little burst of speed. The forest seemed to swell up toward them rapidly, and it was the work of but a few minutes for Heremod’s powerful wings. He carried his passengers steadily toward the center of the forest, where Helga thought she could see the tips of a stone building peeping out among the thick foliage atop the largest of the hills.

“Is that Eryr house?” Helga asked, raising her voice slightly over the wind as their descent picked up speed.

“Aye,” Goderic nodded, shifting his arms under hers as he changed his hold on the reins. He directed Heremod toward the thick trees at the bottom of the hill. For a few seconds Helga felt the uncomfortable rushing of air coming up at her from below, and she ducked deeper into her hood as leaves slapped at her from all sides. Then they were through the canopy, and Heremod was prancing to a halt in a forest clearing, shaking water from his feathers.

Helga let down her hood and stared around her in awed silence. This forest was nothing like those in the east, full of rough gray bark and sweet wildflowers, nor was it like the tall pine forests of her father’s homeland. All around her, trees wove in and out of each other in serpentine patterns, their limbs wriggling and curving in unnatural serpentine shapes. Moss, thicker and more vitally green than Helga was accustomed to seeing in the Danelaw, grew not just over the rocks and roots around the swept-earth path but up and over the trees themselves, making the trunks look like sculptures carved from the moss. Even now near midday, not all of the morning’s mist had been able to escape the thick foliage, and sunlight had to do battle to gain entry through the canopy above, resulting in dense forest air that was wet, lambently glowing, and which smelled of the oldest kinds of magic.

“Are you awake up there?” Goderic’s voice broke her trance, and Helga gave her head a little shake. Goderic had already dismounted and was holding up a hand to help her down, a cheeky grin forming among his whiskers. 

“It’s beautiful here,” Helga said softly, taking his hand and slipping off the horse. The forest felt like somewhere one shouldn’t speak too loudly, out of reverence. “If I was born here, I don’t think I’d ever leave.”

“They usually don’t,” said Goderic, beginning to untie his sword from his shoulders so he could put it back on his belt. “I think Rhonwen only married a Saxon out of necessity. The Cymry like to grow where they’re planted. In fact, I think--”

But Helga never found out what Goderic thought about it, because he broke off at the sudden noise of hooves galloping hard and fast downhill toward them. The forest was thick enough that they couldn’t see who rode toward them, and Goderic began tugging more urgently at the laces that held his sword across his back.

“BASTAAARD SAXOOOONNNNS!” The voice was harsh and grating in the misty silence of the woods, the Cymraeg accent made thick with anger. Helga tore her wand out of her belt and stood ready as Goderic finally loosed his sword and brought it around to the front.

“It sounds like just one person,” he whispered quickly. “We outnumber him, so unless he’s got a better sword than I or a better wand than both of us, we should be able to take him.”

“Right,” Helga nodded, lifting her wand hand a little higher.

“MAKE READY FOR BATTLE, YE WALL-HOPPING SAXON CURS!” the voice rang out again, and now its owner broke through the foliage into view. Helga’s mouth dropped open. Thundering down the forest path toward them, sword outstretched, was a fat little man with long white whiskers, wearing ill-fitted armor and riding a tiny Cymraeg pony. The pony had an almost frantic look in its eyes and appeared to be only just able to sustain its rotund passenger on its stubby little legs. Helga lowered her wand in utter surprise before jerking her arm back up again, just in case; but the man took no notice of her. He made straight for Goderic instead and pointed his sword directly at de Grifondour, the light of battle gleaming in his watery eyes. “I command thee to hand over thy sword, sir, or else give me the satisfaction of taking it from thy hand in honorable combat!” He tried to dismount his pony, realized that his leg armor was unintentionally strapped into his saddle, and gave up, opting to menace Goderic from the pony’s back instead. Goderic leaned over to Helga without taking his eyes off the old man.

“Helga…. am I being offered battle by a tiny little man on a tiny little horse?”

“It appears so, yes,” Helga muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

“Good. Excellent. I was afraid I was going soft in the head and having visions.” He began to lower his sword, but the old man on the pony whipped his own blade out and slapped it against Goderic’s to push it back up.

“You dishonor us both, sir!” the man shouted. “Either stand and fight like a man, or else surrender thy blade to me by the hilt, but do not lower thy sword like a common peasant dropping his scythe at sundown! Hengroen, charge the Saxon dog!” 

The pony Hengroen did no such thing, choosing instead to snort and attempt to turn back uphill. Livid with frustration, the little man began shouting at the pony in the Cymraeg language and tugging at its reins. Helga heard Goderic swallow a laugh.

“I intend no dishonor, sir,” he managed to say, forcing himself not to smile. “This lady and I--”

“DA’ST bring the lady into our parley??” the old man gasped, cheeks turning red. “This is between me and thee, Saxon! Now. State thy name, so that I may know to which house to send thy broken hilt upon thy defeat!”

Goderic glanced at Helga and raised his eyebrows, and she shrugged - they would have to play along. “Goderic de Grifondour, son of Ivo de Grifondour and Eadhild, thegn of Salisberie,” he said with a slight bow. “And you, sir?”

“Cadwgan ap Hywel, descended of that Cadwgan which sat at the table of Arthur, and protector of this great house. No Saxon dog will enter here and trouble my lady cousin while I draw breath, sir! Now, up swords and let us be--”

“UNCLE DWG!”

The voice was tiny but strident and came from up the hill, beyond the trees. At the sound of it, Hengroen the pony began to turn himself back around against his rider’s wishes, which brought on another bout of angry Cymraeg grumbling. 

“Uncle Dwg!?” the voice repeated, and as Cadwgan fought with his pony, a little girl of perhaps eight or nine years came running down the path, skidding to a halt in the swept earth as she saw Goderic and Helga. She had the lovely complexion and long dark hair typical of the Cymry, with deep autumn-sky blue eyes. She had hitched up her long gray dress in order to run, and Helga saw that she had lost one shoe somewhere on her journey.

“Stand back, damsel!” Cadwgan admonished, finally getting his pony to face the right way again. The little girl bent over, hands on her thighs as she caught her breath, and then marched around to stand in front of her bellicose relative, blocking him from advancing.

“Uncle Dwg, Mother told you to stop scaring travellers!” 

“They are Saxon invaders, young lady!” Cadwgan protested. “But fear not! I shall drive them back ‘cross the wall!”

“Uncle Dwg, they’re not invaders, they’re the two guests Mother told you we were expecting!” She turned around to face them then, raising her eyebrows to Helga. “You are, aren’t you?”

“If your mother is the Lady Rhonwen Hræfnsclawu, then yes, indeed we are,” Helga smiled at her. Goderic put his sword back on his belt and went down on his knee in front of the child, swirling his cloak out around him.

“Goderic de Grifondour, my lady,” he said grandly, and the little girl stood a bit straighter and gave him a small bow. 

“Lady Helena Hræfnsclawu,” she said importantly. “Or at least, I will be when I’m old enough to be called _lady_. Are you the witch from the Danelaw?” She turned now to Helga, who nodded.

“Helga Hunlafsdottir. Would you take us to your mother, Helena?”

“Of course,” the little girl said, and then she added with a giggle, “if you’ll help me find my shoe on the way back. I seem to have lost it.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Helga said, giving her a wink. “I happen to be excellent at finding things that are lost. It’s a gift of mine.”

Helena grinned back at her. Then she reached out and took the reins of Cadwgan’s pony, who began walking toward her almost instantly. There was a distinct look of relief in Hengroen’s large grey eyes.

“Now, see here!” Cadwgan sputtered, once again trying to dismount before remembering that he was stuck. “Young lady, I have offered combat to this Saxon and I insist that you release my steed so that I may do battle! Hengroen, turn about and face the enemy! We do not retreat!” Both the girl and the pony completely ignored him, and he continued to protest and grumble as the four of them made their way up the winding forest path to where Eryr house waited for them at the top of the hill.

* * *

Helena led them first to a stable near the crest of the hill, where - as promised - Helga found the girl’s shoe on the path. Goderic gave the master of horse all the proper dietary instructions for Heremod while three stable boys tried to untangle Cadwgan’s armor from his saddle. They left him there, in the midst of challenging the stable hands to battle, and followed Helena further up the hill to the house.

The Eryr family lived in a great greystone building that could almost more properly be called a castle - instead of the long rectangular halls and boat-shaped roofs of the Saxons and the Danes, this home looked much more like the constructions Goderic had seen in Normandy, with flat roofs and a turreted tower. When he mentioned this, Helena nodded and told them that her grandfather had gotten wizard builders from Brittany to come and remake the ancient family house - before he had fallen on hard times with the _ddim-hudolus_ leaders of Gwynedd and lost his wealth. Helga asked the little girl to repeat the Cymraeg word she had used for non-magical people, and after this the two of them spent the rest of the walk up to the castle exchanging words with each other in their native languages, which made Helena feel very smart and grown-up indeed.

When they arrived at the castle someone took their cloaks, and then Helena led them up a narrow staircase into the tower they had glimpsed at the western end of the courtyard. The door at the top was made of dark wood and was set with large metal spikes arranged in spiral patterns. Helena pushed it open and ran inside, and Goderic and Helga followed.

“Mother!” she called out, and ran across the room into the arms of a woman who had been standing at a lectern writing in a book. “The guests are here, Mother!”

“I can see that,” the woman replied, bending to stop her daughter’s forward motion. She smoothed back her daughter’s fly-away hairs and gave her a smile. “Helena, why don’t you go and practice your harp now while I speak to these people? You’ll see them again at table. Go on. Aneirin is waiting.” The little girl gave her mother a nod and smiled at Helga before scurrying off out of the room and down the stairs. When she had gone, her mother came across the room to greet her guests.

Rhonwen ferch Eryr, now Lady Hræfnsclawu, was shorter than Helga by nearly six inches - but somehow Helga thought that, in a contest, this woman could intimidate more with just her eyes than Helga could with both a wand and a sword. Her skin was so snow-pale that Helga could see the faint blue of veins below the skin of her temples. She wore her dark brown hair loose like an unmarried girl, though it was tied in a thick knot near the bottom to keep it out of her way, and the light from the low hearth fire reflected off it in red glimmers like tiny garnets. There were little hazel flecks in her blue-green eyes that could look golden in the firelight, giving her gaze an eagle-like quality that befitted her house and family name.

“Lady Hræfnsclawu,” Goderic said in greeting as she offered her hand.

“Please, call me Rhonwen,” she answered, her Cymraeg accent much thicker than that of her daughter. “I was sad to hear of your mother’s passing, Grifondour. I greatly admired her when I was a girl. And you must be the wandmaker’s daughter?” She turned now to Helga, who also clasped her hand in greeting.

“Helga,” she filled in. “Your daughter is a treasure, my lady.”

“She thinks so,” Rhonwen said seriously, but there was a cheeky lift at the corner of her mouth. “Has she been a talkative host?”

“Oh, she taught me some words in Cymraeg,” Helga grinned. “We’re friends now.”

“Yes,” Rhonwen smiled weakly. She held out her hand to indicate some high-backed wooden chairs at a low table, and they all sat as she went on. “Most of her friends are adults. I can’t give her any brothers or sisters - God knows I had enough trouble getting her - and none of the household have children. I wish she had some friends of her own age.”

Goderic glanced over at Helga and gave her a meaningful grin, then leaned forward in his seat. “Actually, Lady Rhonwen… that is, in some ways, why we are here.”

“Oh?” asked Rhonwen, mildly surprised. Helga got the impression that true surprise was something very rare for this woman. “How would you be able to help with that?”

Goderic nodded in deference to Helga, and she explained the whole idea to Rhonwen, beginning with the day she found little Hnossa speaking to a serpent, and ending with Gwydion Pyk’s suggestion that they come to the Eryr family for help finding orphaned wizards. As she finished, Rhonwen laughed musically. 

“Gwydion Pyk, what an old rambler. Do you know last time he came here, he got hanging drunk with my cousin Cadwgan and wandered off home - naked except for one of my tapestries?” Helga and Goderic both recalled Pyk’s attire during their visit and tried not to catch each other’s eye for fear they’d start laughing. “I’d ask for it back, if I wasn’t afraid of what he’d done to it. Have you met my cousin Cadwgan yet?”

“Ah,” Goderic mumbled, clearing his throat. “Yes, actually. He….”

“He and Helena greeted us at the bottom of the hill,” Helga finished for him, and Rhonwen laughed even harder.

“You’re very polite, both of you. Did he threaten to kill you, or just cut off body parts and send them to your families?”

“The latter,” Goderic laughed, and Rhonwen got up from her chair with a sigh. She crossed the room to a rectangular niche in the stone wall and withdrew a handsome beechwood wand. There was a harp propped in the corner, and she pointed the wand at it; it began to play a soft melody that reminded Helga of watching raindrops collecting and dripping from the overhanging thatch of her cottage in autumn.

“God bless my cousin,” Rhonwen murmured, “but sometimes he is almost more trouble than Helena. That gets even truer as they both get older.” She came back over to her chair but didn’t sit down. “So. You want to build a school for witchcraft, to educate those children who have no family to teach them. I suppose you need me to scry for all the orphaned witches and wizards in England?”

“Not just England,” Helga put in quickly. “Here in Cymru as well. And up north, Alba and such. I don’t want any children on the island left out.”

Rhonwen’s eyebrow lifted gently, as though she hadn’t expected such an inclusive attitude. “There won’t be many here,” she told them. “In Cymru wizards live close, and the families are all connected. If a child is orphaned, someone in the village takes them in. Only out in the most remote areas would you find a child with no one to teach them. But I’ll scry for them here anyway.”

“Thank you,” Helga grinned, but Rhonwen held up a finger.

“Don’t work for free, though,” she went on. “I have conditions.”

“Conditions, Lady Rhonwen?” Goderic asked cautiously. Rhonwen nodded, tapping her wand against her palm.

“If I’m going to scry for them, I want to teach them too. And I want to go and _live_ wherever we set up the school.”

“Oh, of course!” Helga breathed, and she saw Goderic relax back into his seat. “We’d be happy to have you. Divination isn’t my best discipline anyway, and we should all teach what we’re best at.”

“Aye, we thought we’d have to twist people’s arms to get them to come and teach,” Goderic agreed, “but if you’re a willing volunteer it saves us lots of trouble.”

“And my Helena can come and study with the other children? She’s not an orphan, but I don’t…. well, her father would not be an attentive or thorough teacher in my absence.” Helga thought she heard a hint of bitterness beneath the words, but she told herself she was imagining it. Goderic was nodding.

“Of course,” he said. “My younger brother will be one of the students as well.”

“Alright, then,” Rhonwen smiled. “Helena will be thrilled. She’ll have other children to play with for once.” She turned and walked halfway across the room before stopping and looking back at them. “Well, come on,” she said. “If we start now we can finish before it’s time to eat.”

* * *

While Rhonwen set up her scrying materials, Helga and Goderic wandered around her tower room, marveling at the wide array of magical tools she had at her disposal. More than once Goderic reached out to touch some intricate device, only to have his hand slapped away by a flick of Rhonwen’s wand. Helga spent several minutes staring at a shelf of books in an alcove; there were _thirteen_ of them, more books than she had ever imagined could exist in the same room. Several were ancient, cracking parchment that had been rebound in new hide covers, and Helga knew they must have been treasured by generations of the Eryr family. One had Norse runes written on the front, and Helga saw that it was a treatise on the interpretation of runecasting. The others were in Latin, Cymraeg, or some language she had never seen before, a strange collection of straight lines like a chicken’s scrapings. She sighed, realizing what a daunting task it would be to teach magic to so many children when she might not even be able to read what they wrote down.

“Do you like books?”

Rhonwen had appeared at her shoulder, and Helga jumped a little before smiling wistfully. “I’m more accustomed to _listening_ to stories,” she said truthfully. “We Norse aren’t much given to writing things down. I can read, but only runes. Can you read all of these?”

“My father insisted on it,” replied Rhonwen. “Latin, Saxon and Norse runes, Cymraeg, some of the northern tongues, ogham, and enough Greek and Hebrew to get by.”

“Greek and Hebrew?” Helga exclaimed. 

“So I could read Scripture without the bias of the Roman translators.”

“Oh.” Helga traced her finger along the binding of one of the books and sighed. “You must have an excellent mind. Far bigger than my own, I’m afraid. You’ll be a wonderful teacher.”

Rhonwen put a hand gently on her shoulder. “And so will you,” she reassured. “My father told me that learning is the only thing that cannot be stolen, and that an idea is eternal once it has been born. And not all of that learning is to be found in a book. A book just helps in the transmission.” They shared a smile, and for a moment most of the fierceness was gone from Rhonwen’s face.

“Will you teach me?” Helga asked. “Latin, at least?”

“Of course I will. But let’s find our students first, hmm? Come on.”

Rhonwen led her to a table at the back of the room where a copper cauldron with a wide mouth had been placed below a window. Goderic wandered over as well and stared down into it.

“You use a cauldron for scrying?” he asked. Rhonwen’s eyebrow peaked in mild annoyance.

“In Cymru we use cauldrons for most things. Why, what do you use? The skulls of your enemies?” Helga felt a snort of laughter escape her nose as Goderic held up his hands defensively and backed up a step from the table. Rhonwen winked at her, and then she took a tall copper vessel from further down the table and began pouring water from it into the cauldron.

“How does it work?” Helga asked. “I’ve only ever used runecasting for divination. Is the water bewitched?”

“Not yet,” Rhonwen explained. “The water must come from a safe and protected source, that’s the first and most important thing. Otherwise your Seeing can be influenced by outside magic. This water is from the spring beneath our castle, so only we have access to it. And both this vessel and the cauldron are copper, which keeps the water further protected.”

“It’s protected because it’s in a copper jug?” Goderic said dubiously. Rhonwen jabbed him in the ribs with her wand.

“I don’t like your attitude,” she said in a very parental tone. “Go away. You’ll spoil the water.”

“Go away??”

“Go stand over there so you’re not breathing doubt onto the cauldron. Here, take this and write down the children’s names as I call them out. Go on.” She handed Goderic a piece of parchment and a quill and shooed him away from the table. He took it grudgingly, but he only walked a handful of steps away from them. Rhonwen shooed him again, only turning back to Helga and the cauldron when he was standing all the way into the book alcove. Then she picked up her wand. “ _Dangos_ ,” she said, tapping the surface of the water. A soft ring of ripples spread out from the touch of her wand; as they did, the water inside the ring went cloudy for just a moment. When the last ripple touched the outside of the cauldron, however, the water became crystal clear again - in fact, it became so clear it almost sparkled. Rhonwen smiled. “That’s the part you can learn from a book,” she said. “With that spell and the right tools, most people could see _something_ in the water. The years of practice and the right mindset are what help you _know_ what you are seeing.”

“Hmph,” Goderic scoffed in the alcove, but they both ignored him.

“Now what?” asked Helga. Rhonwen picked up a small bundle of velvet cloth from the table and opened it. She showed Helga a beautifully polished round stone, some kind of opal, so dark blue it was almost black and shot through with fiery streaks of white and colored crystal.

“Heart of Myrddin, we call this. It’s the best stone for water scrying.” Putting the cloth aside, she dropped the stone softly into the cauldron, where it sank to the bottom of the bewitched water. Almost immediately the water began to look as though it were not water but liquid light; it sparkled and rippled of its own accord, and the streaked opal stone at the bottom cast dancing rainbow shapes throughout it like a prism. Rhonwen turned to Helga. “Now we scry. I ask the cauldron to show me whatever it is I’m looking for, and the answers appear in the shapes cast by the reflected light and colors.”

“Would I see anything if I looked?” Helga asked, and Rhonwen shrugged.

“Maybe, if you have Sight. You would certainly see _something_. Whether it would be a recognizable image, it’s hard to tell.”

“Excuse me, but am I to stand in the corner waiting all day like a bad puppy?” came Goderic’s voice from the book alcove. Rhonwen gave Helga a meaningful look, and then she straightened her posture and took a deep breath.

“Learn patience, de Grifondour,” she said quietly. Then she placed one hand on each side of the cauldron’s rim and closed her eyes. “I wish to see,” she intoned. “Show me the children who have need of us to teach them.” The water rippled again of its own accord. As Helga watched, the quivering and prismatic reflections began to come together and move apart, and for a split second, she thought she saw the vague shape of a child standing in front of a large body of water. She gasped, and just as quickly the picture became dancing light again. Rhonwen’s eyes didn’t leave the cauldron, but she grinned.

“You saw something, didn’t you?”

“Just a silhouette, for a moment,” Helga whispered, and Rhonwen’s smile widened. 

“You might learn scrying yet,” she said softly. Then, louder: “Goderic, is your quill ready? Write what I tell you.”

“Ready,” Goderic said, and he took a step out of his alcove, quill perched above the parchment. Rhonwen’s face became still, and she ceased blinking.

“I see a boy,” she intoned, and her voice had a gentle echo. “Alone on an island. The far, far north, where the ocean is cold as ice.”

“You mean the islands above Alba and Strathclyde?” asked Goderic, the quill scratching quickly across the parchment.

“He wears a plaid,” said Rhonwen in response. “Yes, I think so. Black hair, black as night.”

“Can you know his name?” Helga whispered. Rhonwen’s head tilted to the side, as if she was listening to something they couldn’t hear.

“Mac IainUidhir,” she said after a moment. “The only wizard of that clan. Do you have that? The picture is changing now, I see another child.”

“Yes,” said Goderic, scratching a line under what he had written. “Go on.”

“I see another boy, lying down to sleep under a stone cross. I think he is being cared for by monks.” She narrowed her eyes at the water, as if straining to see something. “I see behind him Saint Aidan - he points his staff south to show me… Saint Peter, standing beside a well.”

“What does that mean?” grunted Goderic, unsure of what to write down. Rhonwen tilted her head again.

“By a well.... Oh, of course - Bywell. St. Peter’s monastery at Bywell, south from Aidan’s home at Lindisfarne.”

“Oh, of _course_ ,” Goderic mumbled as he wrote it down. “Riddles as well as copper cauldrons. I don’t suppose there’s a riddle to tell us his name, is there?”

“I think _Cross_ may be his name, or something like it,” Rhonwen murmured, ignoring his sarcasm. “It’s enough to contact him. Make ready, another picture is coming.”

Goderic eyed her sideways, but he scratched a line below the second entry and started another. “If you say so,” he muttered.

“I see a girl now,” Rhonwen was saying, “not orphaned but put aside. Put aside, and now running. I see men following behind her, each carrying golden chains. Wait - I recognize one of them. That’s Gronwy ap Tudur, from down by Oswalt’s Cross. This is a Cymraeg girl. She must be Gronwy’s granddaughter. That’s what you write down, we’ll find her with that.” She paused while Goderic scribbled, mumbling to himself as he puzzled over the spelling of the Cymraeg name; then she took a deep breath and began again.

“A new picture - a field of flowers that look like stars, with a child sitting among them….”

* * *

Rhonwen went on scrying for half an hour before the water in the cauldron went dull and flat again, signaling that the stone had shown her everything it wished to show. After putting away the stone and cauldron, Rhonwen led her guests downstairs to the main hall where a meal was being laid out for them on a large round table. Helena was already there with a young man Helga assumed must be Aneirin the harp instructor, and she ran to them and took Helga’s hand immediately, insisting that she be seated beside her. Seeing his charge was in safe hands, the harpist excused himself and went to the kitchen for his own dinner. While a servant filled their drinking vessels and began to cut some bread and cheese, Goderic laid out the long parchment scroll and weighted it down at the corners with cups and platters, and Helena stood on her chair and craned her neck over Helga’s shoulder to get a look at his scrawled writing.

In all, there were fourteen children named on Goderic’s list - they had not written down the five orphans they already had in their care, although the scrying stone had shown them those faces as well. Eleven of these new children were from English territories, two from Cymru, and one from the far northern islands, and there were three pairs of siblings among them. Goderic took a slice of cheese and laid it on his bread, munching the two together as he studied the names.

“Most of them shouldn’t be too hard to reach,” he mused aloud, “except for that poor devil up north of Alba. Long way from here to those islands. Should we start with the two here in Cymru?”

“I think we should start with any of them that might be in danger,” Helga countered. “That poor boy in Alesworth looked like he was living in a cave, hiding from the villagers.”

“They’ll all keep,” Rhonwen said calmly, dipping her bread in honey. “The stone would have shown me if they were in imminent peril. Besides, where would we put them? No. We have to set up the location of the school first.”

Helga thanked the servant who poured her drink and patted Helena’s chair to encourage her to sit down. “You said you could scry for a location, as well?” she asked Rhonwen as she turned back to her host. Rhonwen was tracing the edges of her lips with her fingernail, apparently deep in thought.

“I may not need to,” she said finally. “I _can_ think of a place, actually - one that is perfectly suited to our purposes. It’s in Alba, in the highlands. There was once an ancient hill fort there, at the edge of a loch, and the Romans built a temporary barracks there when they were foolishly chasing the Caledonii about. There are no villages of any kind, magical or non-magical, for several miles in any direction of it. It’s defensible, it has both forest and lake close by, and it has a remaining building and good cellars we can build upon.”

“Excellent,” said Goderic, bumping his fist against the table decisively. “It’s perfect. We can start at once.”

“Oh, not at once,” Rhonwen cautioned, sipping her wine and not looking directly at Goderic’s face. “It’s perfect - and it’s also inhabited.”

“Inhabited by who?” Helga asked, and Goderic frowned.

“But you said--”

“I said there were no settlements or villages around. And there aren’t,” Rhonwen corrected. “But the old barracks tower itself is inhabited by a wizard, and we’ll have to do a lot of convincing if we want him to let us fill it with children.”

“He doesn’t like children?” mused Helga, and Rhonwen snorted a small laugh into her wine goblet. 

“He doesn’t like anyone.” She paused for a moment, putting down her goblet. “But… he _does_ know what it’s like to be young and alone, with nobody to help direct his magical abilities. We might convince him to help these children as he would have liked to be helped himself.”

“Who is he?” Goderic asked as he waved his wand at the wine jug, which floated itself over to him and refilled his cup.

“His name is Salazar,” Rhonwen replied, lacing her hands together on the table. “Salazar Slidrian. His parents were of old wizarding stock in Vasconia, south of Aquitaine. They were in danger from the Moors on one side and León on the other, so they came across the sea and settled in Alba to be away from all the fighting, and took that Saxon surname to blend in. My father met them on his travels up north and they became friends, even brought me to visit once or twice as a child. They died when Salazar was still fairly young - old enough to care for himself, but just barely. My mother kept an eye on him by scrying until he was full grown. He’s become a sort of recluse over the years, and I think the hardest part of it all will be just getting through the door to speak to him. But we can try.”

“Perhaps we can do him some good as well as the children,” Helga suggested, and Rhonwen smiled a mischievous and knowing sort of smile.

“I think I want to try it just to see how he reacts to _you_ ,” she smirked. “ _You_ are composed entirely of sunshine and good intentions, and those happen to be the two things Salazar Slidrian hates above all else in the world.” 

Goderic snorted, spraying breadcrumbs onto the table, and Helga pursed her lips at him.

“Well, we shall see,” she said, aiming her wand at the crumbs he had spat and vanishing them. “Sunshine melts wax, you know.”

Goderic pushed more bread into his mouth and mumbled, “And it hardens clay.”

Helga stuck out her tongue at him, and Rhonwen laughed. “Either way, I will be entertained by the outcome.”

* * *

After their meal, Rhonwen’s servants cleared the table and brought her a large parchment, which she unrolled over the whole space where the food had been. It was a map of the island of Albion in its entirety, from Strathclyde and Alba down to the south Saxons and Kent and from Cymru to Helga’s home in the east. At the top, written in both Latin letters and Saxon runes, were the words _Tir o Prydein_. Helga had never seen a drawing of the whole island before, and she marveled at the unfamiliar and intriguing outline. The image was crude and did not show great detail, but when Rhonwen tapped her wand on any given place, the picture in that spot would suddenly rush toward them - as the ground had rushed up to meet Helga and Goderic earlier that day when they’d landed in the forest - and the parchment would now be showing a much more detailed sketch of that town or location. Rhonwen bade Helena run upstairs and fetch her special quill, and when the girl had brought it back down, her mother began to mark the locations of each child they needed to collect. The ink that streamed from the quill was a bright, shimmering blue that looked still wet no matter how long it had been on the parchment. Rhonwen drew a circle around each village or landmark where a child was to be found, and beside it wrote the name or description she had been given by her scrying stone. Her hand was as lovely and precise as any Helga had seen in one of the priest’s books in Norwic. 

“...and… lastly… the girl Mildryth, here near the border of Kent,” she finished, writing the final few words at the bottom of the map. Helena traced a small finger around her mother’s letters, careful not to disturb the ink.

“This one is the same age as me,” the little girl pointed out. “Will she be my friend, Mother?”

“I should hope they will all be your friends,” Rhonwen replied, tapping her quill with her wand. The ink bubble clinging to its tip changed from the starry blue to a royal purple. With this new color, she walked around to the other side of the table and began to draw a careful circle around a blank spot on the map that Helga assumed was the location of Salazar Slidrian’s hermitage. There was a small black oval on the parchment beside it that must be a lake, but nothing else was drawn on the map for several inches in any direction. Helena was still examining the name and description of the little girl at the southern end of the map, walking her fingers along the line of letters spelling out the names of the different regions.

“What language do they speak in Kent, Mother?”

“Some of them speak Frankish or Norman, I imagine,” Rhonwen answered her daughter as she tapped the quill again and made the ink disappear from the tip altogether. “The high born ones, anyway. The Kentish noble lines all have ties to Normandy and Brittany. But most of the common people will speak Saxon.”

“If I want her to be my friend, I shall speak Saxon most of the time, then?”

“I think we’ll _all_ be speaking Saxon nearly _all_ of the time,” Goderic commented. “All of these orphans are from Saxon lands except the boy in Alba, the two Cymraeg children, and your Hnossa.” He nodded at Helga as he said this. “And she speaks good Saxon, from what you’ve told me. My two Norman boys speak excellent Saxon as well.”

“And the Cymraeg girl is of the family of Gronwy ap Tudur,” Rhonwen agreed, “so she will be educated in languages as well. I expect the Cymraeg boy will know a little Saxon, even if he is not as comfortable with it as the others.”

“Which leaves only the boy from the far north,” Helga sighed. “He will speak the language of the Picts.”

“He can learn Saxon,” said Rhonwen thoughtfully. “And in the meantime, I can translate for him until he settles in.” She gave her quill back to Helena to be returned to her tower room and sat down, watching the little girl pound up the stairs as though she were racing someone. “The question now,” she continued, “is how to contact each child and explain what we’re offering to them.” She tapped her wine goblet with her wand and murmured something, and Helga saw tendrils of steam begin to drift upward from the dark liquid.

“Perhaps we should visit each of them, so we can explain in person and answer their questions?” Helga suggested. “I’m not so fond of apparating, but I can do it if I must, and this way we’ll be able to address them individually and make sure they have a chance to ask for clarification.”

“No,” Rhonwen shook her head. “We want to be ready before harvest time, and we need all the time we can get to convince Salazar to go along with our proposal - and to prepare his home to receive the children. Visiting each of them in turn would take too long.”

“What if we split up?” offered Goderic. “One of us could go ‘round to each of the children while the other two worked with Slidrian.” Rhonwen didn’t seem convinced by this idea either. 

“It would have to be me that went visiting - neither of you speak Cymraeg or Pictish. And we can’t have that, because Salazar won’t even open the door for you two if I’m not with you.”

“Could we send them messages?” Goderic asked, and this time Helga shook her head along with Rhonwen.”

“Most of them probably can’t read,” she reminded him. “ _I_ can only read runes - and some of the poorer children won’t even be lettered in any language at all.”

“She’s right,” agreed Rhonwen. “Written messages would be no good.”

“What if you used singing parchment?”

All three of them turned to look at the unexpected voice. Helena’s harp instructor was standing timidly in the doorway that came out of the kitchen, his harp tucked under one arm and a bowl of blackcurrants in the other hand. He dipped his head toward Rhonwen deferentially. 

“Apologies, Lady,” he said softly. “I did not mean to listen to others’ business.”

“It’s quite alright, Aneirin,” Rhonwen smiled. “Please, sit with us and explain your meaning to our guests.” She waved her wand at a chair across the table from Helga, and it scooted itself out a few inches so the young man could sit down. Aneirin stood his harp against the table leg and sat, holding out his bowl of currants to Goderic and Helga for them to sample.

“Singing parchment,” he began. “It’s a charm I use to help my students learn to recite or sing with correct pronunciation and pitch. I write the words I want them to learn on parchment, and then the parchment, once bewitched, can sing or recite the words aloud for the student. This way they can take the parchment home and practice when I am not with them, even if they cannot read.”

“So we could write a message,” said Goderic, picking a few particularly fat currants from the bowl, “and send it to each of the children, and the parchment could speak our written words aloud to them?”

“Indeed,” Aneirin nodded, looking proud of himself. “And the charm also makes the parchment able to translate languages, so if the child doesn’t understand the language you write in, the parchment will speak it to them in their own tongue.”

“Can it answer questions?” Helga asked. Aneirin waggled his hand.

“Simple ones. It can clarify the meaning of a word; it can repeat itself; and I’ve made them to explain the rules of a certain type of poem before. I suppose my Lady could modify the charm to be able to answer more complex questions, if she desires.” They all looked to Rhonwen, who took a sip of her hot wine before nodding slowly.

“I think it’s a solid idea that solves all our problems at once. Do you bewitch the parchment before or after you write on it?”

“I always wait until after,” Aneirin explained. “It doesn’t affect the charm itself, but if you write on parchment that’s already been bewitched, the blasted thing will keep critiquing your penmanship and trying to offer rhyme suggestions.” He picked his harp up from the floor and seated it in his lap, plucking idly at a few strings. “Would you like me to cut you some parchments tonight, Lady Rhonwen? I had planned to go and cut one for myself in a moment anyway.”

“If you would, please, Aneirin,” Rhonwen instructed. “Medium length, enough for a detailed message. Eleven should do it - we can send just one letter to each of the pairs of siblings. If we manage to convince Salazar to join our venture, the first thing we’ll do is compose the message and get them sent.” She stood up from the table and tapped the parchment map smartly with her wand; it bounced up at the edges and rolled itself neatly back into a scroll, coming to rest gently at the base of Rhonwen’s goblet. “Aneirin,” she said, tucking the long scroll under her arm, “I want you to look after Helena until we get back.”

“And you want the both of us to look after my lord Cadwgan, I suppose?” the harpist grinned. Rhonwen didn’t answer verbally, but she gave him an amused grimace. Across the table Goderic also stood up, one hand still full of blackcurrants and his goblet in the other.

“ _Until we get back?_ ” he repeated. “D’you mean we’re going tonight? Won’t Slidrian be asleep by the time we get there?”

“Oh, quite the contrary,” Rhonwen smiled. “If he’s anything like he was as a boy, then he’s still sleeping until midday and skulking about half the night, making huffy, misunderstood faces at the moon. If we showed up when the sun was still out, he’d probably pretend he wasn’t home. We’ll try to arrive just around sunset. I’ll have your satchels taken off your horse and brought to you, and I’ll go pack one for myself as well.”

“Will we need our satchels?” Helga asked, quietly vanishing the crumbs from Goderic’s side of the table with a flick of her wand. “You think we’ll be staying there overnight?”

Rhonwen tilted her head in thought. “If he’s in a good mood and wants to humor us, we’ll probably stay a night and maybe two. If he’s not in a good mood, we’ll be back here before moonrise.”

“And if that’s the case, we’ll have to think of another location,” Goderic grimaced, downing the rest of his goblet. Helga surreptitiously vanished the stray droplets of wine that ran down the cup’s sides as he put it on the table.

“One step at a time, my lord de Grifondour,” their host smiled. “Salazar can be difficult… but he may yet surprise us.”

“Yes,” Goderic sighed, tucking the remaining blackcurrants into his belt pouch. “Surprises are what I’m worried about.”


	7. Loch Mallachie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting in this chapter and going forward, I have to give a big thanks to Harper Robinson for creating the highly detailed floor plans of Hogwarts we should all be using. (A quick Google search will find them, and seriously, they're the best.) I have used these plans and worked backward to decide what the castle might have looked like in earlier stages of construction.  
> The song referenced by Goderic near the end of this chapter is the Nine Herbs Charm, an Anglo-Saxon medical/magical text available at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Digital Mappa website for your viewing pleasure; I have taken the original Old English text and created a new translation specifically to get it to rhyme, but you can see the original at that site (and probably several other places).  
> I have cast Salazar as being of Basque heritage, a culture which I respect and have always found fascinating for its age and uniqueness. That said, please correct me if I mishandle any part of the Basque language or culture here or going forward. My intent is to celebrate, not to offend. Happy Reading!

The soft blue haze of the early summer evening had already begun to swell with banks of gold and orange cloud outside Eryr castle’s windows when Helga seated herself beside the kitchen fire, leaning her satchel in the corner against the stone wall. She had thought that while they waited for Rhonwen to pack her own satchel for their visit to Salazar Slidrian, she would use the time to speak with her father and let him know the progress they had made. Goderic had gone out to the stables to ensure Heremod had been given his flutterby mash before they made their way north; now he came into the kitchen to join her, shouldering his large frame awkwardly between the bustling servants as he made his way over to the hearth. He put his own pack down beside hers and sat on the end of a nearby bench.

“Giving your father an account of the latest developments?” he asked, looking about to see if he was observed before snatching a remnant of cheese from a table behind him. Helga nodded, taking a small amber bottle from the pouch on her belt.

“Yes, he will have arrived at your estate today with the children; I thought I’d let him know where we’re travelling tonight, and what we hope the next steps will be, while we wait for our hostess to pack.” Helga unstoppered the little amber vial and tilted it over the kitchen fire, letting a single drop fall into the flames before closing it again. The flames surged upward a few inches and turned a hot, merry green; Helga waited until the color had spread to every part of the fire before leaning her face into the tips of the flames. “Grifondour House,” she spoke loudly and clearly. The flames danced for a moment, crackling and singing against the hearth, and then the wrinkled face of Eadgifu pushed its way out at them, green and flickering along with the fire.

“Ah, Lady Helga!” the old woman grinned. “We wondered how you and my lord Goderic had got on. All’s well in Cymru?”

Helga nodded to her. “So far,” she smiled. “Did my father arrive at your estate today?”

“Aye, that he did,” Eadgifu confirmed. “With those boys and that sweet little girl. It is so nice to plait a little girl-child’s hair again!”

“I’m happy you’re enjoying their company,” Helga grinned. “Is my father nearby? I wanted to let him know what we’ve arranged with Lady Rhonwen.” The face in the fire bobbed up and down.

“Aye, he’s just outside with the children. Time for them to come inside anyway, getting dark and all. I’ll just fetch him.” Eadgifu’s face sank down into the embers and disappeared, and for a minute or two the flames bobbed and flickered silently in their hearth. Then there was another surge of sparks, and Hunlaf’s broad and bearded face swam up into view.

“Daughter!” he beamed, and Helga lowered her face further into the green flames until their foreheads touched. “You’ve had safe travels and all is well?”

“Better than I’d hoped,” she smiled, sitting up straight again. She gave Hunlaf a brief synopsis of their journey on the Granian horse, their encounter with Cadwgan, and the progress they had made with the help of Rhonwen and her scrying stone. Goderic scooted his bench closer to the hearth and bent over the fire himself to join the conversation, adding his own details. When they finished, Hunlaf chuckled down into the embers.

“Well, I’ll admit, daughter mine – when you first told me your idea, I thought I was sending you on a fool’s errand. But look here! Already with a roll of students and about to go set up a location.”

“We _hope_ ,” Helga qualified. “This Salazar Slidrian has to _agree_ to it first.”

“And the lady Rhonwen implied that would be the hardest part,” Goderic agreed. Hunlaf nodded, sending a few sparks skittering up into the hazy kitchen air.

“So you’re going to see him tonight, then?”

“Our host is packing her satchel as we speak,” said Goderic. “How are your wards getting on with mine? Will they be happy as schoolmates?”

“Oh, I think so,” replied the wandmaker. “That— hey, hold fast, there!” There was a shuffling and a scattering of embers as another head shoved itself into view in front of Hunlaf, dislodging pieces of burning wood and spilling some ash out onto the kitchen floor. The striped face of Sœtr the crup wriggled up between the hearth and Hunlaf’s chest, barking madly, fighting against Hunlaf’s efforts to shove it back out of the fire. “Away with you, you little menace!” the wandmaker grumbled, resorting to grabbing the crup by his thick forked tail and dragging him backward until he vanished from Helga’s view. “Go on, go and chase that enchanted ball again. Go on!” He was trying to look severe, but Helga was laughing too hard for him to hold onto anything but the barest glimmer of a scowl. He opened his mouth to say something else, but no sooner had the sound of Sœtr’s barks faded than another head inserted itself into the fire between them.

“Fru Helga!” Hnossa called, squirming as though she were trying very hard to balance on Hunlaf’s lap and failing. “She _plaited_ my _hair_ , Fru Helga!” the little girl wailed. “Are you coming home soon? Is _she_ coming to the school with us??” More complaints appeared to be forthcoming, but before she could speak them, the chubby hand of little Harald came into view and yanked at one of the aforementioned plaits in his sister’s hair. “Ow! Harald, no!” Hnossa shrieked, and she disappeared from the flames with her brother’s little hand still firmly attached. Hunlaf could be heard shooing and scolding for several more minutes before he finally reappeared in the hearth, out of breath but laughing.

“You’d think they’d have used up all that energy chasing each other about the orchard all afternoon,” he chuckled. “I’ve sent them all to the kitchens in hopes the food will distract them.”

“It appears, then, that we’ll have to hurry and prepare the school, so we can take them off your hands.” Helga and Goderic turned around at the sound of Rhonwen’s voice. Their host stood in the kitchen doorway with a linen bag slung over her shoulder and a wry smile on her face. She approached the hearth and inclined her head toward Hunlaf in greeting. “Well met, wandmaker. I see you’re keeping busy while we arrange things.”

“Busy is the word, Lady Hræfnsclawu,” Hunlaf grinned. “I don’t envy you and the other teachers once the whole place is full of them.”

“Well, then let’s hope we can recruit enough teachers to make the load light on each of us,” Rhonwen smiled. “Are the two of you ready? It’s near sunset now.” Goderic stood up in response, and Helga nodded. “Then we’ll say our goodbyes, wandmaker, and hopefully speak with you tomorrow or the next day with good news.”

“Go and eat supper with those children,” Helga grinned at her father. She bent her face down into the flames again and pressed her forehead against his.

“Safely go and safely return, daughter,” Hunlaf pronounced. “And may you have the tongue of Loki to persuade this Slidrian fellow to your cause.”

“Thank you,” Helga replied, picking up her satchel. “I think we’re going to need it.”

* * *

Rhonwen led her two guests up to the roof of her tower, which was flat and even and surrounded by a low stone battlement. The three of them slung their bags across their bodies so they would not be lost in travel. Rhonwen held out her hands to Goderic and Helga, and they each took one.

“Ready?” she asked. Helga took a deep breath.

“I hope he’ll let himself be convinced on the grounds of your old friendship,” she said. “I’d hate to apparate for nothing.”

“We’ve _got_ to get you one of those brooms from Saxony,” Goderic chuckled. “Then you wouldn’t need to apparate anywhere.”

“My fondest desire,” Helga smirked at him. Then she squeezed her eyes shut as the three of them disappeared in a blur of motion and wind.

When Helga felt the world go still around her again, she opened her eyes and brushed back tendrils of hair that had come loose from her braid. The three of them were standing near the top of a low hill that was bare of trees or any real sort of vegetation taller than moss. The evening breeze was lively and slapped playfully at her from multiple directions, but it was a mild early summer wind full of the scent of heather and pine, and the sunset sky above them was a gorgeous riot of orange, pink, and gold clouds against a field of pale flax-blue. In the distance, the wind whipped soft clouds up into swirls against the peaks of mountains, making them look as though they were smoking. Helga gazed around, trying to take everything in. The ground beneath her was spongy with moss and tough, coarse grasses, and the bare rock of the highlands poked through it in a hundred places. Behind them spread a long and narrow loch, the surface of the water rippling gently in the breeze and sparkling with reflected sunset light. On a small island in the middle of the loch, a grove of tall pine trees swayed placidly in the wind. Further up the hill, Helga saw, was the object of their quest. Salazar Slidrian’s hermitage stood at the edge of a sharp drop in the land overlooking the water, a long rectangular building with one or two narrow windows facing the loch and a squat, sturdy tower at the northeast corner, which jutted out on a narrow strip of land that extended out into the lake. The stones were grey and unkempt, with moss and lichen growing on them anywhere plants could take hold, but Helga could see that the construction was still strong, a tribute to the Roman engineers who had put the building together six hundred years before. Beyond the building lay a dark pine forest that looked black and uninviting in the dim evening light. A path of bare dirt where the moss had been worn away led from where they stood around to the inland side of the building, but this was the only sign of habitation as far as Helga could see.

“Welcome to Loch Mallachie,” Rhonwen said softly, and Goderic nodded to himself.

“You weren’t exaggerating, it’s completely remote. No danger of the children being found here.”

“And the lake is beautiful,” Helga smiled. Rhonwen adjusted her satchel and began walking up the path, glancing over her shoulder as she went.

“Don’t let it fool you. I think he keeps some sort of water beast in it, just to be sure any non-magical folk are duly frightened away from the place. And while we’re discussing that, don’t take anything on dry land for granted, either. I’m sure he’s got some sort of unpleasantness guarding the front door as well, so best be wary.”

They had made it far enough up the path that they could now see the entrance to the old fort – a heavy-looking, deep-set door made from some wood that was nearly black.

“Damn,” Goderic whispered, stopping abruptly enough that Helga ran into his arm. He was staring down at his feet.

“What?” asked Helga.

“There was a string across the path, and my boot has just snagged it.” He grimaced up at Rhonwen. “What was it you said about something unpleasant guarding the door?”

“Get your wands out,” Rhonwen said by way of response, already pulling hers from her bag. Helga and Goderic followed suit. The three of them stood silently on the path, the breeze ruffling the small hairs around their foreheads, waiting to be set upon by some creature or wraith from the shadows of the building or the woods beyond. They didn’t have long to wait before they saw movement up ahead, near the base of the stone wall. But the shape that detached itself from the darkness was not the shape of a beast or a spirit, but of a man. He strode purposefully toward them, some object held out in his hand, and in the shifting orange and lavender light of the sunset, Helga could see as he approached that he was tall, thin and wiry, with a thick mop of dull mouse-brown hair. The thing he held in his hand was a book, and he began to shake it at them angrily.

“So HERE you are, wife of mine,” he growled at Rhonwen through gritted teeth, and Helga saw Rhonwen stiffen and avert her eyes.

“Jesu help us, it’s a boggart,” she hissed to the other two, trying to ignore the man in front of her whose eyes were spitting fire.

“Every chance you get, every time I leave the castle, you take my daughter and go gallivanting about the country. What are you teaching her now? More languages I don’t understand, so you can write messages to each other that I can’t read?” He shoved the book against Rhonwen’s shoulder, and she staggered backward on the uneven turf. She lifted her wand, but he batted it away.

“Lady Rhonwen,” Goderic began, but Rhonwen flapped her hand at him behind her back.

“Hush,” she managed to say, but Helga could tell that she was finding it difficult to form words.

“Filling her head with all those _books_ ,” the boggart spat in the voice of Æthelweard Hræfnsclawu. “Making her just as _useless_ as you are. Not enough that you make it known how much more learning you have than I do. Make me a laughing stock on the _gemót_. Then you bear me nothing but a daughter and can’t give me any more than that? And now, you’re going to educate her so thoroughly that no decent wizard will want to marry her, either. It was a mercy to your father that I agreed to marry _you_!” He lifted the book again and batted away the wand that Rhonwen was pointing at his chest. “You know what I ought to do? I ought to put a stop to it.” The boggart-husband held the book out in his hand, where it burst into sudden flames.

Something like a shriek squeezed its way out of Rhonwen’s throat, and she practically flung her wand arm upward and into the crescent motion of the spell. “ _RIDDIKULUS_!” she screamed. Her boggart-husband opened his mouth to berate her again – but instead of words, his voice came out in three harsh caws. The next moment he had transformed into a raven, its wings bound, and dropped to the path in front of them. The smoldering book landed open on top of him, pinning him to the ground. A couple of hoarse, angry caws emanated from beneath its pages. Rhonwen took a step backward, her hands shaking, and Helga took hold of her by the wrist to steady her.

“It isn’t done,” she murmured. “It’ll try both of you next.”

No sooner had she said this than the boggart swirled back upward to human size, and in a moment, Goderic’s brother Eaderic stood on the path before them. But he did not look as Helga remembered seeing him just the day before at their estate; this Eaderic was thin and pale, his hair unkempt and his clothing dirty, ill-fitted and moth-eaten. He staggered toward Goderic, eyes full of hurt and confusion.

“You lost it,” he said sadly. “How could you? Two hundred years we have held Salisberie, and you have lost it!” The sadness in his voice turned accusatory, and he threw himself at Goderic, taking hold of him by the cloak. “You lost it, brother, not just for yourself but for me! I would have been thegn after you, but now we are _nothing_! I am a son of the house of Salisberie, and now I will have to beg for my supper along the road!” He shook Goderic violently, even as Goderic attempted to get his wand up between them. “Mother told you to take care of me, Goderic!” the boggart shrieked. “She told you, and you have ruined all her hopes! Nnngh!” The boggart grunted as Goderic finally got enough leverage and threw him backward. He lifted his wand level with his boggart-brother’s eyes.

“ _RIDDIKULUS_ ,” he barked, his eyes hard as stone. The image of Eaderic shrank rapidly to the ground, and suddenly there was a baby on the spot where he had stood, gurgling bad-temperedly as though cranky and in need of a nap. “Much better, eh, little brother?” Goderic panted. The baby blew a spit bubble at him. Goderic was in the process of sticking his tongue out in reply when the baby suddenly rolled over and began to crawl; as it crawled, it turned toward Helga and began to grow, lurching forward on large adult arms too big for its tiny body. Its cry changed slowly into a groan of pain, and suddenly Helga found herself looking down at the sprawling body of her father on the path. A dark stain covered his broad back and almost hid the punctures in his leather surcoat. His thick copper hair was matted with blood from the gaping wound in his skull, and one of his eyes was completely obliterated. He groaned up at her through shattered teeth, and Helga felt hot tears on her face before she even processed what he was trying to say.

“Daughter,” Hunlaf slurred, blood and saliva dripping onto the moss below him. His remaining eye rolled up to look at her. “They…. Too many,” he coughed, and more blood oozed out. Helga slapped her hand over her mouth. “Could have taken them… if you… together.” The words came out mangled and dripping, and Helga thought she might scream in spite of herself. She backed up several hasty steps, only stopping when her back slammed into Goderic’s waiting arm. He held her firmly and shook her a little.

“Finish it, Helga,” he growled, trying not to look at the thing on the path in front of them. The boggart-Hunlaf was still dragging itself across the mossy rocks toward Helga, trying to speak but getting sloppier and more bloodied with each word.

“Where …? Where were… you?” it slurred, and Helga shook her head violently, scattering her tears onto her hand and Goderic’s cloak as he gripped her even tighter.

“Finish it!” Goderic repeated, and he forced her hand down off her mouth so she could speak the incantation. But now that her mouth was free, she found she couldn’t remember the spell. She knew it well – or, would have sworn she did ten minutes ago. But the sight of Hunlaf’s battered body had robbed her of the word in her native tongue.

“Could have… if you were… Daughter,” the boggart was saying. Helga felt a little cry escape her tight lips, and she nearly screamed her next words as she whirled her arm frantically at the image of her dying father.

“ _RIDDIKULUS_!! _RIDDIKULUS_ , _RIDDIKULUS_!” She whipped her wand through the air over and over, crying as she shouted the Latin incantation the others had used. The rattling groan of the boggart-Hunlaf began to change into a growl, and then a hoarse snuffing sound, and then a sharp, staccato bark. On the path in front of them, covered in the smeared innards of a whole basket of crushed strawberries, was a playfully rolling crup. Its white fur was stained red with berry juice, and its thick forked tail launched crushed berries in all directions as it wagged against the ground. Helga swung her wand at it again angrily, and the crup and its carnage of berries were flung into the air and off the path. The boggart hit the ground yelping and scurried off into a small opening at the base of the stone building, where a little hinged door swung closed behind it.

The three of them stood for a few moments without speaking or moving, each staring at the path where the boggart had been. Goderic finally let out a shaky breath and tugged his cloak back around to the correct position on his shoulders.

“I liked it better when I was a boy and the worst thing a boggart could show me was a swarm of wasps,” he said softly. Helga pressed her palms against her cheekbones to push back the second wave of tears that was threatening.

“That’s the beauty of childhood,” she murmured. “Your fears always have a face and a name, and you know exactly what weapon will vanquish them. When you begin to fear things that can’t be killed or destroyed, you know you’ve grown up.” She wiped her hands on her dress to dry them and slipped her wand back into her cloak pocket. Both she and Goderic then looked uneasily up the path at Rhonwen, who was still staring out over the loch with her back to them.

“Are you well, Rhonwen?” Helga said hesitantly. But they could both see that she was not, at least, not completely. Her breathing was so stiff and shallow that they could barely see any movement – she could have been a statue carved from the rock of the hillside.

“No need for any of us to repeat what went on here tonight,” Goderic offered. “Right, Lady Rhonwen?”

Rhonwen did turn and look at them then, but Helga thought that her gaze was going through them instead of resting on them. Without answering Goderic, she turned slowly and began walking up the path. Goderic and Helga shared a look, and then they followed her in silence.

* * *

The door to Salazar Slidrian’s home, they saw as they grew closer, was indeed made of nearly black wood, and it looked like the newest and best-kept part of the whole building. The surface had been polished, and although there was no handle on the outside, there was a lovely pattern of squares made of some silver metal that shimmered in the light of the setting sun. Rhonwen approached the door and rapped on it aggressively with the handle of her wand.

“Salazar?” she called sharply. “It’s Rhonwen. Don’t pretend that you aren’t home.” She still looked rattled, Helga thought, but she managed to keep it out of her voice. They waited, the wind playing with their cloaks beginning to feel cooler now as the sun dipped behind the hills. There was silence from within. “Salazar Slidrian, don’t you dare make me disintegrate this door. I can, and I will, because I’m better at breaking charms than you are at casting them.”

There was another long silence from the other side of the door. Goderic adjusted his cloak impatiently. “Friendly, isn’t he?” he grumbled. Rhonwen sighed, but didn’t answer him directly. Instead she rapped her wand against the door again.

“Salaz—”

At their feet, one of the squares in the door unexpectedly opened with a sharp creak, and they all stepped back a few paces. Warm candlelight spilled out of the little door-within-a-door, and then was momentarily obscured by the small body that stepped out of it. Helga tried to keep her face neutral, but she found her head tilting to the side and her eyes widening in spite of herself. The little creature that came out of the small door was no more than three feet tall, but its ear-span nearly equaled its height. Its eyes were large, round, and watery, a sort of golden-green color like a not-quite-ripe pear. They bulged ponderously on each side of a large wedge-shaped nose, one side of which was pierced and set with a tiny silver ring. Tufts of black hair sprouted unevenly across the space between the massive pointed ears, and each tuft had been braided into a tiny plait that ended in a small green glass bead. Helga surmised that whatever species the creature might be, she must be a female one, for she wore a little red dress made from what must once have been a plaid blanket, tiny but sewn in precise miniature proportions to Helga’s own.

The little creature blinked placidly at Helga and Goderic before turning her watery green-gold eyes up to Rhonwen.

“Mistress Rhonwen is very bad to say she will break Master Salazar’s door,” she scolded. Her voice was like the creaking of branches in a strong wind, and Helga was fascinated by the accent – the _Rs_ tumbled musically like a stone rolling downhill, and the _Ss_ were almost lisped, but not quite. Rhonwen bent down to put herself at eye level with the little creature and put on a smile.

“Master _Salazar_ is bad for not opening the door to Mistress Rhonwen, especially after making her go through a boggart to get here. The least he could do is come to the door and find out why I’ve come.”

“Master Salazar makes a sport of being bad, my lady,” the creature returned, looking as though she were trying not to grin. “And then he makes Bihotza apologize for him.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with his way,” Rhonwen smirked. Standing up, she half turned to Helga and Goderic and waved an introductory hand between them and the creature. “Helga and Goderic, this is Bihotza – the Slidrian family house-elf. Bihotza, these are my friends: the lady Helga Hunlafsdottir, and the lord Goderic de Grifondour. We have come to talk with Master Salazar, because we have an adventure planned for which we may need his help.”

Bihotza’s round eyes grew even wider, if that were possible, and she shook her head slowly. It made the tips of her ears and her braids quiver. “Master Salazar does not like adventures, Mistress Rhonwen….”

“No, he doesn’t,” came a voice from behind the door. “Although he does occasionally make exceptions.” The opposite half of the huge black door swung softly open then, and a young man stepped out of the candlelit interior onto the spongy moss. His tall, slender frame was wrapped indifferently in a cloak of dark green wool, the silver clasp at his throat left undone as though he had merely tossed it around himself for a brief conversation at the door and had no intention of fully committing to being outside. A halo of soft black curls tumbled down from his head to nestle in his collar, gently framing a face that was angular and delicate like a saint in a Byzantine mosaic. His brows were as straight and sharp as knife slashes, and the eyes beneath them were dark and brooding against the pale skin. It would have been a face that nearly always looked dangerous, were it not for the gentle Cupid’s-bow shape of the upper lip and the beginning of a smirk that looked like it lived permanently in the corner of the mouth. Helga curled her toes into the soles of her shoes. The way Rhonwen had described him, she had expected to see a skulking, brooding, wizened little man, perhaps with a perpetual scowl or an unkempt beard; she had _not_ expected him to be handsome.

“Salazar,” Rhonwen was saying, holding out her hands to the young man in the doorway. He didn’t take her hands so much as he let his hands be taken, and he didn’t return the squeeze she gave his fingers, but he also didn’t pull away.

“The lady of Eryr house has come to visit,” he said wryly, and Helga was struck by the softness and lightness of his voice that seemed so incongruous next to his dark visage. It had the depth of a grown man’s speech, but carried in the weightless tenderness of a teenage boy whispering love poems over a hedge into his lover’s garden. Helga bit into the side of her cheek to stop her mind from wandering. If he was going to keep talking in _that_ voice, then she was going to be completely useless by the end of the evening.

“I haven’t seen you since before Helena could read,” Rhonwen smiled, patting Salazar’s hand. “Not in person, anyway.”

“Ah, yes,” Salazar replied, and this time he actually let the smile reach more than just the corners of his lips. “How is the little eaglet?”

“Eight years old and much too self-assured for her own good,” Rhonwen grinned. “Take us inside, Salazar, it’ll be cold when the sun fully sets.”

“Introductions first,” Slidrian smirked. “I need to know who these people are that you want me to let into my house.”

Before Rhonwen could make the introductions herself, Goderic stepped forward and extended his hand, taking hold of Salazar’s wrist. “Goderic de Grifondour, sir, thegn of Salisberie.”

“I see,” Salazar murmured, pulling his hand out of Goderic’s grip before he could tighten it. “The wizard at the hand of the Saxon king. Aatxe’s horns, Rhonwen, this must be serious if you’re bringing the king’s men to my house.”

“Serious in import,” Rhonwen soothed, “but not in a threatening sense.” Salazar raised an eyebrow at her as if to say _We shall see about that_ , but he didn’t argue. Rhonwen put her hand on Helga’s shoulder then and nudged her forward. When she didn’t say anything, Helga realized it was being left up to her to introduce herself. Salazar was flicking his eyes over her appraisingly, and she had to look down at his shoes so she could focus.

“Helga Hunlafsdottir, sir,” she murmured. Salazar Slidrian’s dark slash eyebrows lifted in obvious confusion.

“I’m sorry, Helga Hun-ffla- _what_ , now?”

“H… Hunlafsdottir,” Helga repeated, a little flustered. She hadn’t been expecting to have to repeat her name, and the surprise was almost enough to make her question what her name actually _was_.

“Huff-la-floffer?” Slidrian repeated stupidly, and Helga’s knee-jerk reaction was to begin a stammering explanation.

“Hunlafs…dottir,” she enunciated uncertainly. “It’s Norse. I’m the daughter of Hunlaf the wandmaker. So my surname is Hunlafs-dottir. Daughter of Hunlaf. It—” She trailed off as she realized that his lips were twitching with barely-concealed laughter. “You’re mocking me!” she gasped, and the laughter broke out from between his lips then in little bursts of air that he held up a hand to conceal – or, at least, _pretend_ to conceal.

“Forgive me, lady Helga,” he chuckled, “but I so seldom have anyone interesting here to mock.” When he saw that she wasn’t joining in his laughter, he swallowed it with some effort – although his expression was still unrepentant. “Truly, I apologize,” he smiled unconvincingly. “I suppose as a consolation, I should let the three of you inside before you freeze. May I escort you?” He slipped an arm out from under his cloak and offered Helga his bent elbow so respectfully that she laid a tentative hand on it, giving him a little half-smile.

“I suppose you may,” she allowed, feeling herself getting a little flustered again. Salazar grinned.

“Good. Right this way, Helga Fluffle-poffer.”

“Ugh!” Helga gasped, glaring at him incredulously and jerking her hand off his elbow. He was still laughing in the doorway behind her as she stalked irritably into the candlelit room, the house-elf Bihotza scurrying in around her feet.

* * *

Rhonwen finished explaining their plans to Salazar just as the sun sent its final rays over the cloud-capped hills in the west. She had done most of the talking; Salazar seemed suspicious of Goderic’s position as an official of the king, and Helga had refused to speak to Slidrian while the unrepentant smirk was still on his face. They were sat at a square table in the center of a small but clean kitchen, with a plate of bread and a bowl of bilberries provided by Bihotza in front of them. Salazar had remained largely silent during Rhonwen’s speech, only interrupting with the occasional request for clarification on one point or another. His face had been inscrutable, giving no indication of how well (or not well) he was receiving their proposal. Now he stood apart from them, gazing out the narrow slit-window at the blue-black evening darkness and pondering, while Bihotza the elf walked the perimeter of the room lighting more candles and torches. Helga watched the little creature in fascination; she lit the flames easily and without the benefit of a wand or spoken incantation, simply snapping her long fingers and watching the wicks ignite. Helga leaned over to Rhonwen and whispered.

“Rhonwen, what is a _house-elf_ exactly? I’ve never seen her kind before.”

“They are not common in your father’s homeland,” Rhonwen explained quietly. “Even here in Prydein, you often don’t see them if you are ordinary working folk. They serve wizarding families with long pedigrees and, usually, high birth. They are long lived creatures – Bihotza there probably served first under one of Salazar’s grandsires back in Vasconia – and they remain always with the same family, unless that family’s line dies out. Or if they are set free.”

“Set free?” Helga murmured. “What do you mean, set free? Is Bihotza a slave?”

“Well, now, that is a peculiar question,” Rhonwen mused, watching the elf stoke the hearth fire at the other side of the room. “She was, I suppose, the last time I was here four years ago. But tonight she is wearing a dress – and yet she is still here, working.”

Helga’s brows knit together. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said softly. Rhonwen shrugged uncomfortably.

“A house-elf is set free when their master presents them with clothing. Someone has given Bihotza a dress, and yet she is still serving Slidrian house as though she were not a free elf. Curious.”

“ _Curious_?” Helga balked, pushing aside the cup of wine Bihotza had brought her earlier. “Stop a moment. If they can only have clothes when they are free, what in Woden’s name do they wear as slaves??”

“Remnants,” Goderic answered through a mouthful of bread. He had taken a handful of bilberries out of the bowl and had been arranging them in a square on the tabletop in front of him; now he tapped one at the corner to adjust its position and looked up at her. “Sacks; old blankets; leftover cloth from clothing making. It has to be discarded, and can’t be sewn, otherwise it counts as clothing.”

Helga blinked at him, completely at a loss. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. The wine and bread in her stomach seemed to curdle and shift uncomfortably, and she looked at Rhonwen as if hoping she would counter Goderic’s words. Rhonwen only gave her another imperceptible shrug. Helga stiffened.

“Does this happen in all noble wizarding households?” she demanded, trying not to pronounce _noble_ with an edge to her voice.

“Not in Cymru,” Rhonwen said, her face diplomatically blank. Helga rounded on Goderic, who was now lining up more bilberry squares to make the outline of a house and outbuildings. He flinched under her gaze, looking bewildered by its severity.

“We haven’t had a house-elf since Blandina died when I was a boy,” he explained. Helga reached over and stopped his berry construction.

“But you did have?”

“Of course,” he said easily. “Blandina’s clan was part of our household since before Rome. Would you rather I had sent her away to starve? She was like family. She’s buried in a mound near my parents on the estate, just like a witch or wizard.”

“But she was a _slave_ ,” Helga reiterated, seeing that Goderic’s expression was still blank and innocent. “I thought wizardkind no longer held slaves? That we had all agreed to put a stop to it among ourselves, even if we couldn’t among the non-magic folk?”

“We don’t enslave each _other_ ,” Rhonwen murmured, looking into her wine cup instead of at Helga or Goderic. Color was beginning to come up into Helga’s cheeks.

“How can you say that, when clearly we _do_?”

“House-elves are different,” Goderic answered when it appeared Rhonwen would not. He was now constructing a bilberry pathway leading away from his bilberry house. “They’re born linked to a wizarding family. If we put them all out to fend for themselves, what would they do? They’d be utterly lost. No land that belonged to them, no sense of purpose, no skills with which to create a life for themselves—”

“You mean, except the highly advanced wandless magic they possess and the housekeeping skills which they are forced to use for wizarding families?” Helga snapped. “If they can keep your house, they can run their own.”

“But they don’t _want_ to keep their own,” Goderic protested, his brows knitted in confusion. “Blandina would have been insulted at the thought.”

“ _Would_ she have?” said Helga irritably. “You couldn’t at least have given her a wage for her labor?”

“What would she have wanted a wage for?” asked Goderic. “She ate from our table, the same as we did; slept in our home; and she didn’t need to buy clothes.”

Helga hissed air out of her nose in frustration and turned to Rhonwen, who was again avoiding their faces diplomatically. “I don’t think he understands, Rhonwen,” she prodded, and Rhonwen nodded over her cup.

“Nor do you, in many ways,” she murmured. “To your credit, of course. But the house-elves have lived this way since the time the Great Stone Circle was built. And once a culture – wizards or elves – has collectively learned a thing as a truth, it is a very hard task to undo that learning.”

“It’s wrong,” Helga spat. Rhonwen’s face was immobile, but she looked meaningfully at Helga over the rim of her cup.

“So is paying a _wergild_ for a man’s life. But your anger cannot make either of them go away.”

Goderic stopped building his bilberry burial mound and looked as if he wanted to ask what exactly was wrong with a _wergild_ , but Helga had already scooted back her chair and turned away from him.

“Bihotza?” she called, beckoning the elf away from the hearth to join them at the table. Bihotza put down the poker she had been using to stoke the fire and approached Helga, eyeing her with cautious curiosity. Helga smiled at her. “Bihotza, are you a free elf?” she asked gently. Bihotza nodded, setting her hair beads to quivering again.

“Yes, Mistress. Bihotza is a free elf since the first snow last year.”

“Did Master Salazar give you your dress intentionally, Bihotza?” Rhonwen asked, and she received another jingling nod.

“Master Salazar is bad at sewing, Mistress Rhonwen, but he is making it himself. Bihotza had to fix it because the seams was puckered, Mistress.”

“Did Master Salazar set you free because he knew it was wrong to enslave you, and he wanted you to be happy?” Helga asked hopefully. Bihotza’s large ears vibrated, and her face scrunched into what Helga thought might be an expression of derision.

“No, Mistress,” the elf said, shaking her head. “Master Salazar freed Bihotza because he wanted her to go away and leave him alone.” Goderic snorted at that, and Rhonwen sighed.

“That does sound like him,” she muttered into her wine cup as she tipped the last of the drink into her mouth.

“Then why do you still work for him?” Helga pressed, taking one of Bihotza’s spindly hands. “If you are a free elf, you could go where you like – live where you want, worry only about yourself, not have to serve someone for no reward.”

“Bihotza stays because Master Salazar cannot live without her, Mistress,” the elf answered nonchalantly. “Master Salazar doesn’t know how to cook, Mistress, nor how to fix his clothes or clean things. Master Salazar would starve to death without Bihotza. So Bihotza stays no matter what Master says. Bihotza is a free elf now, so she doesn’t have to do what Master Salazar says anymore. Master didn’t think about that when he set Bihotza free.” She leaned close to Helga’s ear and whispered loudly, “Master Salazar is a little stupid, Mistress, but Bihotza doesn’t hold it against him.”

“I heard that, you little pear-with-legs,” came the soft voice of Salazar Slidrian. He had wandered back over to the table from the window, and now he took out his wand and summoned the jug of wine from the other side of the room to fill a cup for himself. “I thought elves couldn’t speak ill of their families,” he murmured. Bihotza stood on her toes (which only lifted her to about three and a half feet in total) and shook her ears at him.

“Bihotza is a free elf,” she pronounced, “and can say what she likes about Master Salazar whenever she likes to say it.”

“Hurrah for Bihotza, then,” Slidrian muttered, and he downed the wine in one gulp before pouring himself some more. “Would you mull some of this?” he said, holding the jug out to her as he sat down across the table from Helga. “Saxon wine is piss-poor without spices.”

“It is not – Grifondour estate produces a damned good quality wine, sir,” Goderic countered. Salazar turned to him with a look that said _Oh, are you still here?_ and smirked.

“I assume you’ve never tasted wine from Vasconia, then.” He wiggled the jug in Bihotza’s direction pleadingly. “Bihotza… mulled wine, please?”

“Bihotza doesn’t have to obey any orders she doesn’t like, Master Salazar. Bihotza is a f—”

“A free elf, yes, I know,” Salazar finished with a melodramatic sigh. “I gathered that earlier this evening when I told you not to open the door to anyone.” He picked his wand up again – Helga saw it had a striking striped wood grain, and a milky, polished green stone set into the handle – and pointed it reluctantly at the wine jug.

Bihotza snatched the jug from him before he could cast any spells. “No, sir!” she squeaked. “Master Salazar must not. Master Salazar will ruin the wine with his bad spells, sir!” And having said this, she spun on her heels and took the wine off to a side table to prepare it herself. Salazar rolled his eyes long-sufferingly.

“I’m an expert potion-maker, Bihotza,” he protested, but without much force. The elf answered without looking up from the wine.

“Potions and wines is not the same thing, Master Salazar!”

“Really?” Salazar whispered into his wine cup. “Oh, dear, I had no idea.” He downed the rest of the cup in one swig again. Helga scooted her chair back up to the table and leaned forward, intrigued.

“You are a potions expert?” she asked. Salazar lifted one eyebrow and gave her the barest hint of a grin.

“So you’re speaking to me now, are you?” he quipped, leaning forward to mimic her position. Helga saw that his eyes were a deep and faceted green, like a pine forest after a rain shower. “I suppose I can be called that. Or, at least, potions are what I’m best at doing. As far as _magic_ goes, that is.”

Helga ignored the suggestive tone in his voice and plowed ahead. “So… if you help us form a school for magic… then you’d want to teach the students potion-making, I’d imagine.”

“Ah. _That_.” Salazar took a deep breath and sat back in his chair, but he didn’t answer immediately; he sat quietly while Bihotza brought the mulled wine to the table and plunked it down grumpily, watching the elf and the wine and, in fact, looking everywhere in the room except at his guests. Rhonwen finally prodded him with the handle of her wand.

“Yes, _that_ ,” she said. “That is why we came, if you’ve forgotten. Do you have an answer for us?”

Salazar Slidrian began to pour himself some of the mulled wine, watching the steam float up from the surface of the dark liquid for a moment before responding. “You see, there’s one problem with your plan, Rhonwen, well-organized though it is.”

“What’s that?”

“I hate children.”

“Yes, well, you hate yourself too, but you manage to live well enough in spite of it,” Rhonwen retorted, the pleasant tone never leaving her voice. Across the room at the side table, Bihotza snorted audibly. Salazar pursed his lips.

“Kindly keep your comments to yourself, Bihotza, thank you.”

“Oh, on the contrary!” Helga smiled, helping herself to the mulled wine. “I’d be happy to hear what Bihotza thinks of the plan. Bihotza, come and sit with us and tell us what you think.” There was a stool against the wall by the hearth fire, and Helga summoned it to the corner of the table at her left, patting it to invite Bihotza to sit. The house-elf approached tentatively and sat, spreading her red plaid skirt around her legs.

“Bihotza is grateful Mistress Helga wants to ask what she thinks,” Bihotza hesitated, “but Bihotza knows nothing about schools, Mistress.”

“Maybe not,” Helga allowed, “but this is your home as well as Salazar’s. I’d like to know how you feel about it. If you and Master Salazar agree to help us, we would bring a group of children here to live until they are grown and can do magic well. They would be here for several years, and more would probably follow. We would have to make some changes to this house, and there would be extra work like cooking more food each day, and cleaning clothes for quite a few people. And since you’ve said Master Salazar isn’t quite skilled at these things—”

“Hmph,” Salazar interjected, but Helga ignored him.

“—a lot of it would fall to you. Of course, we could hire some helpers for you. But you would probably need to be in charge of them.” They all sat quietly for a minute or two as Bihotza considered this. The elf blinked her large green-gold eyes slowly and deliberately, obviously giving the matter serious thought.

“Master Salazar should do it,” she said finally, wiggling her ears. “Master Salazar should not be alone all the time.”

“Traitor,” Salazar mumbled. He scooted as if to get up from the table, but before he could leave the chair, Bihotza had snapped her fingers and apparated from her stool to the edge of the table in front of him. Her hands on her hips, she stepped down off the table and stood on his lap, pinning him to the seat.

“Master Salazar has forgotten, then,” she said flatly, and Salazar went still. He put down his wine cup and looked away as the elf continued to speak, her eyes level with his even if he wouldn’t look at her. “Master Salazar has forgotten when Mistress Çinara and Master Santxo died and Master Salazar was all by hisself, and Mistress Rhonwen’s father had to come teach Master Salazar how to apparate so he could go to market and buy hisself food. How he had to bring Master Salazar books so he could finish learning how to be a wizard. How Master Salazar had to learn not to talk the _sugeazkuntza_ when he came across the sea because even wizards here is afraid of it. What if these children can talk it? If Master Salazar doesn’t teach them how to use it right, who will do that? Hmm?”

Salazar still avoided Bihotza’s eyes, but his face was straining to remain expressionless. Helga tried to parse out what the elf had been talking about.

“ _Sugea_ … _sugeazkuntza_? Does that mean…?”

“Parsel-tongue,” Rhonwen filled in. “Ormrmal, your people would call it.”

“You have the Serpent Speech?” Helga asked Salazar softly. He glanced at her but didn’t say anything. Helga’s face brightened abruptly. “Salazar, that’s wonderful!”

“Is it?” he muttered darkly, but Helga was unperturbed.

“The little girl in my care, Hnossa – she has it as well! It was how I discovered she was a witch in the first place. She didn’t know she was speaking it, and I knew that someone would have to teach her how to regulate it, but I was so worried we wouldn’t find anyone who could! But here you are!”

“Here I am,” Salazar whispered, twitching his wand to pour himself more wine. Bihotza snapped her fingers at the jug, and it vanished before it reached his cup.

“No more!” she squeaked. “Master Salazar has drunk enough tonight and will stop before he embarrasses Bihotza in front of guests.” She hopped down from his lap and walked smartly across the room to stoke the fire again, ignoring the irritated glare from her former master. The four at the table sat in silence for a few minutes, broken only by the crackling of the fire and by Goderic’s quiet humming as he used the last of the bilberries to outline a miniature stone circle at the border of his imaginary berry estate.

“If—” Salazar said suddenly into the quiet, and they all jumped. “ _If_ I agree to this,” he said slowly, rolling his wand back and forth across the tabletop under one fingertip, “then I want it made clear that I am an equal partner with the three of you. I am not just the owner of the house. I have equal authority, and I teach the children how I like in the subjects that I am given charge of.”

“Of course,” Helga said immediately. “We wouldn’t presume to know more about the Serpent Speech than you, or about potions. Just as none of us presume to know languages better than Rhonwen. None of us will be subordinate.”

“And if we divide the students up, if we are each responsible for looking after a certain number of them, then I want first pick. I won’t be stuck with some wild thing I can’t handle.”

“I think we should all be charged with the students who best fit our personal strengths and weaknesses,” Helga agreed.

“And I am not agreeing to do this all the year round,” Salazar said, pointing his wand handle at Helga. “I will need time away from them. If they have nowhere else to go, then _I’ll_ go away somewhere for a few months out of the year.”

“I’ll second that one,” Goderic concurred. “You can’t expect children to sit inside with dusty books during high summer, not when they should be out of doors sporting. You can take your time away then.”

“And,” Salazar demanded, “I understand that we will need to expand the house, but the rooms below this one are not to be touched. They are mine, and will remain so. My private rooms. No students down there unless I take them there for a lesson, and none of you either. I can’t let you have my whole house.”

“That can be arranged,” Rhonwen assented. “I think each of us should have at least two private rooms – one for a bedchamber, and one in which we can store our books and work on planning our courses of instruction. And the children shall have separate bedchambers – on the opposite end of the house from ours, if you like.”

“The opposite end of the _world_ would be better,” Salazar muttered, looking over his shoulder to see what Bihotza had done with the wine, but his face looked more resigned than combative. “And I hope you don’t plan to start right at this moment,” he added grudgingly. Helga began to grin as she realized that this was his way of saying he agreed without actually saying the words. She scooted out from the table and came around to where he sat, taking his hand before he could get it out of her reach.

“Thank you,” she beamed. “Thank you, thank you!” Salazar found himself trapped as Helga threw her arms around him and squeezed; after a moment’s wriggling, he managed to extricate himself.

“But I will complain _aggressively_ and _constantly_ , because that is my right,” he grunted, smoothing the wrinkles she had put in his tunic. “And I won’t be made to cheer up, no matter what orders I am given by you, Helga Puddle-totter.”

Helga shot him a momentary glare, but she was too pleased to keep it up for long.

“We’ll start making detailed plans tomorrow, and we might even be able to start expanding the building within a week or so!” she grinned. Salazar blanched.

“Did you say _tomorrow_?”

“I’m sorry, Salazar,” Rhonwen appeased, “I know it’s very fast. But we want the school ready to begin by the end of the warm months, and we only have three of those left. If we start now, that will give us time to recruit some other witches and wizards to help us, to make plans for how we will structure the lessons, and to contact all of the children, and give them ample time to travel here, if they cannot do so by magic.”

“But…,” Salazar began, trailing off when he realized he wasn’t sure what his next point was going to be. Bihotza came across the room and patted his hand reassuringly.

“Cheer up, Master Salazar,” she said. “Bihotza will open a new jar of honey for Master Salazar’s guests for breakfast in the morning, and make new bread. Master Salazar likes the bread best when it’s new and hot.”

“ _Breakfast_?” Salazar breathed. “All three of you are sleeping _here_ tonight?”

“Well, you don’t expect us to apparate back to Cymru just to sleep and then come right back, do you?” Goderic chuckled. “We packed satchels. Besides, the lady Helga hates apparating.” He patted Salazar on the shoulder hard enough to make him rock slightly on his heels. Helga reached out and put her hand on Slidrian’s arm – gently, because he looked like an overwhelmed little boy whose mother had just brought home triplets and put them into his bedchamber.

“I’m sorry, is it awfully inconvenient?” she asked softly. Salazar glanced around at the three intruders into his solitary existence, looking for a moment like he might actually say _Yes, it is, now go away_ ; then he sighed deeply and gave Helga his faint hint of a smirk.

“It is inconvenient, but I suppose it’s not awful,” he relented. “BUT I only have one bed, and none of you are getting it.” He pointed a finger at them to make sure they understood that he meant business. Goderic chuckled and began poking his head nosily into the doorways that led out of the kitchen to the handful of other rooms.

“Not to worry, your bed would undoubtedly be too small for me anyway.”

Salazar fixed him with a glare that would have frozen the loch and walked over to stand in the doorway Goderic was snooping in, drawing himself up out of his slouch to his full height. He was obviously thinner and leaner than Goderic; but he was shorter only by a few inches, and he spread out his arms against the doorposts to make up for what he lacked in breadth.

Helga crossed the room and pulled Goderic away from the blocked doorway by his cloak.

“Come along, children, let’s be friendly,” she teased. “After all, we _have_ dropped ourselves into poor Salazar’s lap quite unexpectedly, and we can’t blame him for being ruffled. The least we could do is be polite guests, Goderic.” Over his shoulder, she winked at Salazar. Their host relaxed in the doorway, crossing his arms and leaning against the frame, one ankle tucked nonchalantly against the other.

“I’ll amend my statement,” he smirked. “I’m still not giving up my bed, but _you_ can share it with me, if you like.”

Helga stopped abruptly in surprise, and Goderic backed into her, nearly toppling the both of them to the floor. He tugged his cloak out of Helga’s hands and tried valiantly to keep from laughing aloud. Helga blinked at Salazar, not sure if she was supposed to be impressed by his audacity, or if he thought he was being funny. Perhaps both. She folded her hands demurely in front of her bodice and approached him slowly, dropping her eyelids to give herself a soft, doe-eyed look.

“Oh?” she breathed. “Are… are you sure…,” she stammered, “…that there’d be enough room for all three of us?” Salazar’s smirk drooped a little at the edges.

“Three?”

“Of course; you, me… and your enormous _arrogance_?”

Helga kept blinking innocently up into Salazar’s face as Goderic melted into a bellowing fit of laughter behind them. He mimed being stabbed in the gut with a sword, accompanied by the appropriate sounds and staggering. Even Rhonwen had slipped a hand over her mouth to hide her giggles. Salazar shot Goderic a dark glare, but when he looked back at Helga he had put his smirk back into place.

“Your loss, Helga Huffle-poffer,” he whispered. Then he sank back into the doorway he had been blocking and dropped out of sight down a flight of stairs.

“Oh, dear,” Helga sighed. “I do hope we can all get on with each other a little better tomorrow than we have tonight.”

“Better?” Rhonwen scoffed, opening the mouth of her satchel as wide as it would go. “That was as friendly as I’ve ever seen Salazar. He must like you tremendously. I think he agreed almost entirely on your account.”

“That’s his way of saying he likes me, is it?” Helga frowned. Bihotza nodded up at her as she went to put out some of the candles.

“Oh, yes, Mistress Helga. “If Master Salazar is very polite, then he is thinking of ways he could hex somebody. Once Master Salazar started saying _Lady Bihotza_ – that was the day before Master tried to make Bihotza go away. Today he says _pear-with-legs_ – that means Master is pleased with Bihotza again.”

“That’s not very healthy for relationships,” Helga mused, walking about and helping the house-elf to put out lamps. Rhonwen chuckled as she reached into her bag to find something.

“Salazar doesn’t have relationships,” she said, pushing her arm into the satchel up to her elbow. “Perhaps we can change that.” She dipped her arm further into the satchel, the mouth of which was now at her shoulder. Helga had thought the bag was only elbow deep, but apparently she had misjudged it.

“Well,” Goderic said, yawning cavernously, “let’s worry about changing Slidrian tomorrow. For now, I suppose we really are sleeping on the floor?”

“Nonsense,” came Rhonwen’s muffled reply as her head disappeared inside her bag. A moment later, she reemerged, pulling on something with both hands. “Why do you think it took me so long to pack, Goderic de Grifondour? I came prepared.” She gave another sharp tug, and a long rolled-up something popped out of the satchel. A tap of her wand caused the object to bounce about in the air before unfolding and stretching itself out on the kitchen floor, revealing itself to be a tidy little cot with a blanket and pillow already laid out. Rhonwen brushed loose hair back from her forehead and gestured to Goderic. “Come on, then, lend us a hand. There are two more of them in there.”

* * *

The next morning, after the promised breakfast of new bread and honey, the four of them got straight to work. When the breakfast platters had been removed from the table, Rhonwen laid out the map and showed Salazar the name and location of each orphan they had marked. Salazar spent the morning hunched in his chair with his blanket over his head, obviously disgruntled at being awake so soon after sunrise. He winced every time Goderic’s deep voice resonated through the kitchen. But to his credit, Helga saw, he did occasionally lean his face out of the blanket long enough to ask Rhonwen a question.

Over the course of the day, they discussed a myriad of subjects, with Rhonwen filling up a generous stack of parchments with the plans they all agreed upon. Their first point of discussion was the list of subjects they ought to teach the students, and how they would decide that a student had completed their education. Eventually they concurred that there should be four types of lessons – Information, Basic Skills, Advanced Magic, and Personalized Subjects. Everyone would start with the Informational lessons – a little history and the names of notable witches and wizards; the names and traits of various magical plants and animals; things a student born to a non-magic family would need to learn – plus reading and writing, if they were not literate when they arrived. If a student already knew these things, they could progress to the next level. Basic Skills lessons would teach everyday magic like summoning, vanishing, travel, common charms, and spells one would use for ordinary life. Advanced lessons would teach more difficult magic like divination, potion-making, transfiguring objects, and magical self-defense. If a student then showed a particular aptitude for a certain branch of magic – for instance, Hnossa and any others like her who spoke Parsel-tongue – they would then receive individual or small-group lessons in that subject once a week. The four of them read over this plan a few times and agreed it was what made the most sense; they then worked out a schedule for who would teach which lessons, on what days, and for how long.

“We’re going to need help,” Helga muttered over lunch, reading through their list of subjects. “There aren’t enough of us to teach all of this AND cook and clean for the children, too – and who will go out and wrangle these magical animals we want to teach the children about?”

“Not Bihotza, Mistress,” came Bihotza’s squeaky voice from the other side of the room. Goderic chuckled.

“I’ve just been thinking of that,” he said. “I think we should hire a man to care for the grounds around the school, and to keep a small stock of magical creatures fed and watered so the children can study them. This person could also teach lessons on magical creatures, and perhaps take care of some ordinary livestock, some pigs or geese, maybe, for eating. Does anyone know someone who’d fit that position?” None of them did; but they agreed that they could send word to Gwydion Pyk in Lundenburh and have him put the question to his wizarding guests when they passed through his inn, and send them a suitable candidate. Helga then suggested that they also hire someone to care for the school building itself – to help Bihotza with the cleaning and repair any damages the children would inevitably cause. In this case, Goderic said that he had just the man in mind.

“Who is he?” Salazar asked suspiciously from under his blanket.

“His name is Hankertonne Humilis. When I had lands from the king near the town of Chedglowe, he was my caretaker there, because I wasn’t often at that property. Last year the land went to the abbey at Malmesberie, and I think he went to work for Abbot Ælfric, but I doubt he’s happy there. An abbey isn’t the best place to try cleaning things using magic without getting caught. He’d probably jump at the chance to work here.”

“Then we’ll write to him as well as Gwydion,” Rhonwen said, making a note to herself on a parchment that held a list of tasks to accomplish. “Now, what about the kitchen? Bihotza can’t cook for so many on her own.”

“May I suggest someone for that?” Salazar asked, coming out from under his blanket a little now that the hour had passed midday. When everyone nodded, he went on. “More accurately, _two_ someones. They’re a couple. Hoshea ben Menashe, and his wife Ya’el. They were friends of my parents, cooks for some lord’s estate in Vasconia. I’d like to invite them here.”

“Jews?” Goderic said, after pondering the sound of the unfamiliar names for a moment. Salazar stiffened.

“Is that a problem?”

“Course not,” Goderic shook his head. “Just never met a Jew before, especially not a Jewish wizard. Do they allow magic in their religion?”

“Does yours?” Salazar murmured, eyeing the cross resting in the open neck of Goderic’s tunic. Goderic shrugged.

“Good point,” he conceded. “But you think they’d be right for the job?”

“They’d keep a clean and efficient kitchen,” Salazar nodded. “Good, healthy food for the children, and they’ve worked in a large house before so they know how to cook big with small amounts of money. And Bihotza is familiar with them, so she won’t feel like she’s being invaded in her own territory.”

“Master _Salazar_ is the one who feels like he’s being invaded,” the house-elf mumbled as she crawled under the table to fetch a quill Rhonwen had dropped. Rhonwen smiled at her as she handed it over.

“Well, it does sound nice for you to have some old friends here, I agree.”

That afternoon Rhonwen composed the three letters – one to Goderic’s man Hankertonne, one to Salazar’s friends in Vasconia, and one to Gwydion Pyk – and after they had stopped for the evening, she apparated back to her home in Cymru to pass them off to her owl-keeper to be sent. When she returned, she brought the stack of parchments cut for her by her harpist, along with his instructions for casting the charm on them to make them speak. They would wait until all the other planning was done before they wrote the letters to the children, so they would have a good idea of precisely when lessons would begin, but Rhonwen spent that evening practicing putting the singing charm on other parchments, just to be sure she had got it right.

The next three days were spent in creating detailed drawings of the modifications they would be making to Salazar’s house. Rhonwen had Salazar draw a plan of the building as it was, and then she produced several sheets of parchment that had been stretched to translucent thinness. These were overlaid onto Salazar’s drawing of his home, so they could draw rooms and corridors they planned to construct and see how they would need to intersect with the existing structure. The rooms below ground were more extensive than the others had first realized, and Helga thought it a shame to waste them – this nearly caused an argument between Salazar and Goderic, but Salazar was adamant that those rooms remain undisturbed. Rhonwen brokered a compromise in which a single room at the bottom of one flight of stairs would be expanded into a larger kitchen, leaving the rest of the cellar rooms untouched, to which Salazar grudgingly agreed. This larger kitchen would be better able to serve a score of people, and the current small kitchen in which they now sat would become a sort of small meeting room for the instructors and other staff. The rest of Salazar’s house above ground consisted of two large rooms – one at the entrance, and one off to the right which must have been the dining hall for the Roman soldiers who had built it – and a series of smaller rooms past the kitchen which must once have been sleeping quarters for the soldiers. It was decided that the dining hall, which Salazar rarely used, would retain its original purpose and be set with large tables for the students to eat from; meanwhile, the smaller soldiers’ dormitories would have their walls magically rearranged to form four classrooms. Rhonwen suggested putting a large staircase in the entrance room, which would lead up to a second floor full of dormitories for the children. Finally, Goderic proposed a wall around the building on the three sides not facing the loch, forming a courtyard in which the students could play or practice more destructive spells with some protection from the wind – and also making the school defensible, should the need ever arise. Rhonwen agreed, and then sketched a tower at each corner of the wall outline – one of which, she requested, would be set aside for her private rooms. Goderic concurred, and claimed a second tower for himself. Helga said she wasn’t enthused about the prospect of so many stairs each morning, and so she opted for a chamber below ground that branched off the kitchen room they were going to expand.

When the drawings were completed, as the week neared its end, Rhonwen sent another letter – this time to Williame Morieux, the wizard builder from Brittany who had helped with some of the expansions on Eryr house several years before. She hoped he would come and serve as an overseer of their building over the next few months – the four of them were reasonably gifted users of magic, but wizard builders were experts in spells and charms that had been precisely crafted for the construction of buildings, and Helga pronounced that she’d never be confident the whole thing wouldn’t fall down on them unless they got someone to help who had experience in the field. They had gotten a response from Gwydion Pyk the day before saying that he would certainly try to scrounge up a candidate for the position of groundskeeper, and now there was nothing to do but wait for answers to their remaining letters so they could begin the construction. Nothing else to do, of course, except writing the invitation letters to the students.

“We will have to tell them,” Rhonwen said as they sat around the table late in the evening, writing herself another checklist, “what we plan to do here, what day to arrive, and how to get here.”

“But suppose the letter is discarded by the child and then found by some _mundani_?” Goderic asked. “We can’t let the location of the school be discovered, that was the whole point of coming so bloody far north and turning Salazar’s house upside down.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” Salazar smirked, “something I feel will not happen very often between Goderic and myself, so please take note.”

“Perhaps we could send them a _farar-skjóti_ ,” suggested Helga, but Rhonwen shook her head even as Goderic made a face.

“What’s a fara-skooey?” he whispered.

“A _portus_ key object,” Rhonwen translated for him, still shaking her head. “No, that’s too much of a risk. A non-magic person might find it and end up here by mistake.”

“The ones who have had magical parents could come by hearth travel, they’d know how,” Salazar mused. “We could build a fire large enough for it outside. And some of the braver ones who aren’t from magic families would probably _try_ it, if we explained how and sent them the potion. But walking into a large fire is probably intimidating to a child who’s only just understanding they can do magic in the first place. Some will want to travel on horseback or some other way. So the question is; how do we direct them here without giving away the location to anyone else who would read the letter?”

In the end, it was decided that the best option would be to send each child a small pouch containing a vial of the hearth-travel potion and a small piece of enchanted glass. They could use the potion and travel through a large fire, or they could look into the glass and see images of how to travel to the school if they were riding or flying. In this way, only the child holding the glass would be able to find them. Bihotza gave Rhonwen the remnants of a broken looking-glass to use, and she put on the enchantment while Salazar brewed the potion. Helga was pleased to see that he had not been exaggerating when he’d said he was skilled with potion-making – and when she said so, he called her yet another ridiculous name, so she supposed he must be pleased to hear it.

When they sat down again to write the letter an hour or so later, Helga felt a gentle tug on her sleeve and looked down to see Bihotza standing patiently beside her chair, her large ears wiggling importantly.

“What is it, Bihotza?” Helga asked. The house-elf climbed up on her stool so all four of them could see her and cleared her throat.

“It’s only that… how will the children come here by fire, Master Salazar, if they don’t know the name of the school?”

The four of them looked at each other blankly, realizing that they had nearly forgotten the most important part of the letter they would be sending. In order to travel by hearth, one had to clearly speak the name of their destination – and as of yet, they had not given their school for magic a name. Helga laughed aloud.

“How stupid of us! Of course, Bihotza, thank you! We have to give the school a name. Does anyone have a suggestion?”

“Well, we could always name it after me, as it is _my_ house,” Salazar offered, “but th—”

“—but that wouldn’t make you much of an equal partner, now would it?” Goderic finished. “Anyway, if we’re going that route, it should be named after Helga. It was her idea to begin with.”

“Oh, yes,” smirked Salazar, “ _Funffle-moff_ is an excellent name for a school.” His face didn’t change, but his eyes glittered with suppressed laughter, and Helga stuck her tongue out at him.

“I don’t think it should be named after any one person,” Helga countered. “It doesn’t belong to any one person – it belongs to all the children, and I hope it shall continue to belong to generations of children after we’re gone. No matter how the world changes, there will always be orphans who need teaching.”

“Then we should choose something simple and easy to pronounce,” Goderic said. “We don’t want children mispronouncing it and ending up in some stranger’s fireplace in Rome.”

“Spoken like a man who has done exactly that,” Salazar murmured amusedly. Goderic crossed his arms.

“I was seven, I couldn’t pronounce my Rs, and I thankfully only ended up in Northumbria. But it was very traumatic.”

“I’ll bet it was,” Salazar grinned, but he resisted the urge to prod further. Helga was nodding.

“Yes, it should be short and simple, but it should also be meaningful. We’re creating something very important here. Meaningful – but still playful. After all, this will be a place for children. Rhonwen, what do you think?”

Rhonwen had been sitting very quietly while the others talked, looking out the slit window over the loch. Now she turned back to them, her face dreamy and a bit distant.

“I was given a dream the first night we slept here,” she said slowly, turning the copper bracelet she wore round and round on her wrist. “It seemed odd at the time, but now I think it relevant. In my dream I stood at the edge of the land looking down onto the loch, and this house was not here. It was all grass and moss and clumps of mugwort growing among the stones. As I turned to look behind me at the land, I saw a white pig come trotting up the path, running fast but slowing down as it neared me. It was like Henwen in the old legends, except he was a hog instead of a sow. He came and sat down in the grass on the spot where the house sits in reality, winded as though he had run far and long and was suddenly able to rest. When he had caught his breath, he began to eat the clumps of mugwort that grew round about him. Now I see the meaning I was meant to take from it.”

“I’m glad _you_ do,” Goderic muttered, raising his eyebrows at Helga and Salazar. Helga asked for both of them.

“I don’t know the story of Henwen. Would you tell me?”

“It was part of the stories of Arthur,” Rhonwen explained. “Henwen was a white sow whose offspring were portended to bring ill-fate on Prydein, and so she was harried and chased until she was driven into the sea.”

“Not unlike our kind are harried by those who fear our abilities,” Salazar said quietly, and Rhonwen nodded.

“In the stories, Henwen was driven away; but in my dream, this white hog found a place to rest here on this hillside, and he ate the mugwort herb – a charm of protection.”

“ _Strong against the hateful things_ ,” Goderic murmured, and when Rhonwen lifted an impressed eyebrow, he chuckled. “Mother used to sing the Nine Herbs to us when we were small – Eaderic was still in his cot. I was always useless at magical herbs, but that one I can still recite: _Remember the mugwort, and what it makes known / the mighty declaration it sets in stone. / Eldest of green-things, and matchless it be, / as strong against thirty as against three. / Strong against sickness, and poison in the glass, / strong against the hateful things that through the land do pass_.”

Rhonwen smiled at him. “Not the exact words as I learned them, but then, every mother sings her own version, I suppose.”

“They must do,” Goderic replied. Beside him, Salazar shifted uncomfortably in his seat and began searching around for the wine jug.

“So,” he grumbled, “you’ve had a dream about a white pig and some mugwort, and we’re supposed to get a meaningful name from that, are we?”

“A hog eating mugwort,” Goderic mumbled, twisting some of his longer whiskers around his finger. “A white hog… eating mugwort….” The four of them fell into a comfortable silence as they pondered how to glean a name from the contents of Rhonwen’s dream. For several minutes there was no sound but the whisper of candles and the soft crackle of the hearth fire. When a voice finally broke the stillness, it was not one of the four at the table who spoke.

“Hog-wort.”

All four heads turned to look at Bihotza the house-elf, who had gone to stoke the fire while they were pondering. She put down her poker and came back across the room, the little glass beads in her hair glittering in the firelight.

“What did you say, Bihotza?” Salazar asked, leaning down to her. The house-elf clambered up onto the stool beside Helga, smoothing her dress primly before speaking.

“Hog-wort, Master Salazar,” she repeated. “Masters and Mistresses could call the school Hog-wort. That puts the two words together, you see. Hog-wort’s School. Easy for the children to say, Master Goderic, and it tells Mistress Rhonwen’s dream.”

“Hog-worts,” Salazar mouthed, testing the sound of the word. He looked at Helga.

“Hogworts,” she repeated, a smile slowly creeping up her face. “Yes, I like that!”

“No mispronouncing Hog-warts,” Goderic grinned. They all looked at Rhonwen, and she picked up her quill. Smiling warmly, she drew their stack of written plans over to her and wrote across the top, the quill scratching quickly across the page in a satisfied way.

“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” she pronounced, drawing a line under the words. “That’s it, then. That’s our school.”

“Bihotza, you are a treasure!” Helga exclaimed, giving the elf a little squeeze. “What would we do without you?”

“Like as not,” Bihotza squeaked, “the Mistresses and Master Goderic would do passably. Master Salazar would starve.”

The kitchen rang with laughter as Salazar tossed some crumpled-up scraps of parchment and bounced them off Bihotza’s wedge-shaped nose.

* * *

Next morning, all four of them apparated back to Eryr house – Salazar with great reluctance – to see the letters sent off to their intended recipients in the claws of Rhonwen’s prized team of trained owls. They stood atop the tower with the owl-keeper, a satchel full of parchment scrolls at their feet, surrounded by nearly a score of silent barn owls with large black eyes and inscrutable faces. They were all tethered to wooden perches at the moment, but the owl-keeper stood by, waiting for the order to loose them. Each scroll in the satchel was sealed with wax and had a little cloth pouch tied around it, in which was secured a vial of hearth-travel potion and a piece of enchanted glass. While Goderic walked about among the owls, attempting to get one of them to hoot back at him, and Salazar sulked in the corner of the tower deep inside his hood, Rhonwen and Helga looked over their master copy of the letter again, making sure there were no further revisions to be made.

At the top of the letter was a greeting, with a blank space for each child’s name; as they sent each one, Rhonwen would say the child’s name over it and tap it with her wand, and the appropriate name would appear in the empty space. The letter read:

This is a message for ____________.

Greetings, and do not fear this message, as it is for your benefit. It has come to our attention that many children in this land who have magical abilities find themselves now orphaned and without family to care for them or teach them to use their magic. You have been identified as one such child. We are a group of wizards and witches who have endeavored to create a school for magic, which we now invite you to attend – the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

At this school, you would learn all you need to be a competent witch or wizard, as well as subjects taught in the non-magical world such as reading and reckoning numbers. More importantly, you will also be fed, clothed, given a place to sleep, and kept safe from discovery by non-magical people. We do not require any payment from you – only that if you come, you try your best to learn what we have to teach you.

Attached to this letter, you will find a wax seal and a small pouch. If you do not wish to attend this school, simply bury this letter and these items where they will not be found. If you do wish to attend, please send the wax seal back to us with the owl who brought it. In this way, we can reckon how many children will be coming.

Inside the pouch are items to help you travel to us. One is a piece of enchanted glass. If you have means of travel, such as a mount to ride, then you can use this glass to direct your course. Simply look in the glass regularly as you travel, and it will show you the next part of the road ahead, until you come to our location. If you do not have means to travel, then you will use the liquid from the small vial also found in the pouch. Away from non-magical eyes, build a fire large enough for you to stand in. Pour the liquid onto this fire. When the flame changes color, step into the fire and say very clearly, “HOGWARTS.” You will be transported by magic from that fire to a hearth at the school location.

Please arrive on the last day of the weed-month, when you will be assigned to a teacher and given a bed. Lessons will begin the next day. We hope to see you here, well and eager to learn.

Signed:

Lady Rhonwen Hræfnsclawu

Helga Hunlafsdottir

Goderic de Grifondour, thegn of Salisberie

Salazar Slidrian

Helga marveled at the charmed parchment – which she could read with the help of the enchantment, even though it was written in Latin letters. They had done the enchantments late last night, and then used this master copy as a test. Sure enough, when they had sealed it and then opened it again, the page began to speak the written words aloud in their own voices. They had each used their voice for one paragraph – Rhonwen, Helga, Goderic, and Salazar last – and had each read their signed name in their own voice as well. Helga had insisted on this; she wanted the children to hear all four voices of the people who would be teaching them. The harpist’s charm had worked brilliantly, and now all that remained was to send them. Helga took a deep breath of the mild morning breeze.

“Are we ready, Rhonwen?”

“I think we must be, or we will begin to doubt ourselves,” Rhonwen replied. She picked up the satchel of letters and walked over to the first owl on the nearest perch. After shooing Goderic away from the bird before he got himself bitten (she could tell the owl was nearing the end of its patience, even if Goderic could not), she placed the first letter in the owl’s ponderous claws. “Arthur and Morgen of Weslege,” she recited, and tapped the scroll with her wand. The parchment glowed a pale blue for just a moment and then was dull again. At Rhonwen’s nod, the owl-keeper unlatched the owl’s tether, and the bird launched itself into the brightening sky, flying fast and hard due south toward Devenescire.

Rhonwen repeated the process for each scroll, going down the line of owls, giving each bird a letter and then investing it with the name of its recipient. When she had addressed the final parchment – to “Ysolt and Brictric Blæc of Hexworthy” – she closed the empty satchel and then stood back with a deep breath. The four of them watched the big bird winging its way southwest, following its progress until it was lost against the white-gold clouds of the summer morning. When they had stood quietly for a minute or two, the owl-keeper threw open the hatch door that led down into the tower and began carrying the empty owl perches back inside.

From deep inside his hood, Salazar murmured, “Since you’ve dragged me out into the sunlight for this, Rhonwen, can you at least feed me some breakfast?” Rhonwen smiled at him, and gave his shoulders a quick squeeze while he was too sleepy to flinch away.

“Yes, but we’ll make it a quick one and then get straight back to the School. We have a lot of work to do, and only one summer in which to do it.”


End file.
